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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23451748">Vernalis</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/stutter/pseuds/stutter'>stutter</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>civilians [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>RuPaul's Drag Race RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate universe: alternate universes, Dolly is a dog, Magical Realism, Multi, Soulmates, playing fast and loose with the multiverse</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 14:27:44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>20,811</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23451748</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/stutter/pseuds/stutter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>His spine has been prickling for an hour. He glances in the rear-view at their drag bags in the backseat. If they weren’t both bald - if they were in face, be-wigged - Trixie suspects their hair would be floating all around them like they were mermaids.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Trixie Mattel/Katya Zamolodchikova</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>civilians [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1397551</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>167</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>135</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. I-5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanierose/gifts">beanierose</a>.</li>


        <li>
            Inspired by

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/20437604">intents wicked or charitable</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanierose/pseuds/beanierose">beanierose</a>.
        </li>

    </ul><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>so this was written as a birthday present for the brilliant and kind beanie. i truly never thought i'd post it on here. but i feel like?! we all need all the distraction and entertainment we can get right now?! so please, if you're interested, enjoy this thing I did.</p><p>i think you could probably read this without knowing too much about the other fics in this series, but I imagine you'd be pretty lost if you haven't read beanie's gorgeous <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/20437604">intents wicked or charitable</a>. but you have, right?! hasn't everyone? it's perfect, is the thing about it. here's my tribute to it, and to her. thank you for this beautiful world you gave us, and for letting me play in it.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Something weird happened about seventy miles back. Katya’s sitting straight up in the passenger seat, eyes wide in the rose-gold wash of the early morning sun. “You want me to take a turn?” he asks Trixie, for the hundredth time. He’s restless, now, his phone dead and the radio tuning in and out of fuzzy static.</p><p>“No.” Trixie doesn’t take his eyes off the road, but he lifts a hand from the wheel and closes it over Katya’s knee. “You should get a little more sleep, girl,” he tells him.</p><p>“Can’t. Are you serious? Feels like I took a taser to the taint,” he grumbles, cross-body stretching one arm and then the other in the limited confines of the car. Trixie feels his stare on him. “You felt it too, didn’t you? I’m not crazy?”</p><p>It’d be easy to lie, to say he hadn’t felt anything, in the hopes that it might put them both more at ease. But the fact is, it was almost midnight, and now it’s dawn. They were an hour south of San Francisco, and now the four-lane freeway has shrunk to two, and the little roadside placards all name places he doesn’t know. Katya was dozing beside him in the passenger seat, and then he was awake in the light, yelling in alarm. Trixie, vision spangled in the sudden sun, almost swerved them off the road, recovering at the last second with Katya’s fingers clamping down over his on the wheel. </p><p>His spine has been prickling for an hour. He glances in the rear-view at their drag bags in the backseat. If they weren’t both bald - if they were in face, be-wigged - Trixie suspects their hair would be floating all around them like they were mermaids. </p><p>“Well, you <i>are</i> crazy, but. No. No, of course. I felt it, too,” Trixie says. He’s not in the business of lying to him. A thought crests, splats on the front of his brain like a bug on the windshield. “I’m like - if I’d fallen asleep at the wheel, we’d be dead, right?”</p><p>“No, bitch, it was <i>fast,</i>” Katya insists. “Like <i>that.</i>” He snaps his fingers in Trixie’s direction, and then goes suddenly stiff. “You think we <i>did</i> die?” </p><p>“Oh my god. No, I do not.” Trixie squeezes his leg a little tighter, even as his stomach lurches. “I don’t know what happened, but we’re fine, obviously.” </p><p>Katya nods, keeps nodding. He peels Trixie’s fingers away and interlaces them with his own, pressing his mouth to the closest of Trixie’s knuckles. The road ahead of them stretches on perfectly straight and empty, so Trixie allows himself a moment to look at him. His eyes are still a little bugged-out, but when Trixie gives him a squinty smile he returns it without much trouble. “This thing’s - I keep going for it, I don’t know why. It’s toast,” he tells him, reaching with his free hand for the phone on the seat beside him. He barks out a sudden laugh. “‘Member that fucking - rotted fake phone you gave me during the show that time?” </p><p>Trixie cackles in surprise. “The dummy phone!” He nods. “For dummies.”</p><p>“Yeah, bitch!” Katya gives him a cheeky wink. “Hello, hi.”</p><p>“I also remember the fine we owed the venue when you threw it at the floor and chipped the paint, you psycho,” Trixie says, which makes Katya laugh even harder. </p><p>“I take zero responsibility! I was provoked. <i>Provoked!</i>” He waves his arms emphatically, still white-knuckling the brick. He’d just finally upgraded to an iPhone from this fucking century, too. The tragedy. Trixie’s is dead, too; after whatever happened back there it looks like someone’s cooked them, the charging ports all cracked with thin red veins. Trixie’s kind of afraid to touch his. Instead, he rolls his eyes. </p><p>“You, avoiding responsibility? What kind of parallel universe have we fallen into?” he says dryly. Katya loves this, getting bullied by Trixie, making him pay for it later. He lets out a high peal of indignant laughter, but then suddenly goes silent with pulled-plug immediacy. He turns. When Trixie glances at him, even his lips look pale. “What?” </p><p>“Maybe it is.” Katya’s stare throws heat on the side of his face. “A parallel universe. That’s what happens in <i>Twin Peaks.</i> They drive right into one. Spoiler alert, sorry.” </p><p>“Girl, come on,” Trixie says. He forces himself to laugh. “First of all, I’m never going to watch that show, and second, that’s insane.” </p><p>“They do!” Katya shoots upright in his seat. “You hit the right coordinates at the right speed, and... “ </p><p>“And what?” Trixie fires back. “You think those coordinates are on the I-5?” </p><p>Katya doesn’t say anything. Silence fills the car, noxious and humid. Dread creeps in through the air vents. Trixie lets out a breath, and it hangs there as if suspended in amber. </p><p>“Okay, listen,” he says, when Katya only stares ahead. “I don’t know what’s going on, but we’re fine. Right?” Katya nods. Trixie leans over and squeezes his fingers tight again. They shoot past another road sign; Trixie misses the name on it, but clocks the big blue fork-and-knife symbol, and an arrow alongside it, pointing off to the right. “You hungry?” he asks, even as he flicks his turn signal up. “Probably not a bad idea to try and eat something, right? Since we’ve apparently been driving all night?”</p><p>“Totally.” Katya sounds distant. He’s looking out his window. In a hushed voice, he says, “But Tracy, look. The trees.”</p><p>Trixie glances past Katya’s head. He feels uneasy about looking away from the road for more than a moment, but Katya’s voice has an alarm bell in it, a blinking red light. “Pine trees,” he realizes dully. The sun strobes through them into his eyes, lights up Katya’s silhouette like red carpet flashbulbs. He feels waterlogged, jetlagged. “They should be...palms. Right? Where are the palm trees? Why does it look like fucking Wisconsin out here?”</p><p>“Where the <i>fuck</i> are we?” Katya says. Then he breaks out into a blast of laughter that edges on hysterical. “Where the fuck <i>are</i> we!”</p><p>“We just need food,” Trixie says firmly. His hunger feels like an easy, solvable problem, biological rather than existential. He didn’t go to college for philosophy, Joanne. He went to fucking beauty school. “I’m sure wherever we are, they’ll have one of the three meals you like.”</p><p>“Fuck you,” Katya says fondly, wiping at his eyes. “I’ve been expanding my palate!”</p><p>“Ice cream sandwiches don’t count.” Trixie ignores Katya’s squawk of protest as he takes the turn as fast as he dares. The trees split apart around them, and then they’re suddenly back in civilization, buildings blooming into view on either side of the thoroughfare.</p><p>“Oh!” Katya cranes, face and fingers pressed against his window. “Okay, like, this is a town!”</p><p>Trixie honks out a laugh. As stupid as it sounds, there’s relief in this, the physical evidence of humanity. Trixie eases on the brake, drops the car’s speed. They roll past quaint houses, storefronts, everything rosy and demure in the light of the still-rising sun. Out in the middle distance, Trixie can see the sparkle of the ocean; wherever they are, the Pacific is still in sight, a beacon of familiarity. </p><p>“You need any tchotchkes, girl?” he asks, jerking his head at the shops along the road. “Because I have a feeling you can re-up your whole Precious Moments figurine collection at any one of these fine retailers.” </p><p>Katya wheezes. “I wanna get me one of those driftwood signs that say, y’know, <i>Live, Laugh, Love</i> on it,” he enthuses. </p><p>“In your case, like, <i>Die, Grunt, Shart,</i>” Trixie says helpfully, and Katya thuds a fist against the door handle hard enough to accidentally open the power window a sliver. The air tastes like salt. Trixie likes it so much that he hits the switch on his own door, holds it until the car floods with the bright cyan smell of the nearby sea. He can feel the fear that had been strangling them on the highway loosening its grip. Whatever happened back there on the I-5 starts to feel like a bad dream, like coming to this seaside town was the plan the whole time, a fun little detour on the way to their San Fran gig. </p><p>“Look!” Katya taps his finger against the window like a kid at the aquarium. “Looks like food, right?”</p><p>Trixie squints in the direction of Katya’s fingernail. “Oh, sure!” He clocks a storefront in the near distance up on the right, painted white and framed with greenery hanging on either side of its doors. “Cute. You wanna?”</p><p>Katya whips around and grins at him, eyes sparkling with glee. “You think these villagers ever seen a faggy gay fag like you before?”</p><p>“Like <i>me?</i>” It’s early enough, or the town is sleepy enough, that the streets are totally empty. Trixie slides up to the curb and parks, kills the engine. “Draw the rest of your eyebrows on before you come for me, bitch, you look like Bat Boy.” </p><p>Still, he reaches into the backseat and grabs the flannel he’s got draped over his drag bag, slips it on over his tank top once his seatbelt’s off. Katya’s shrugging into his hoodie, too; the air off the water has cold teeth, and wherever they are, it’s far enough from LA that it really is spring, not the perma-summer they’re used to. “You wanna go get us a table?” Katya asks. The second they’re out of the car, he’s bent in half at the waist, head between his knees. He clasps his hands and swings both arms over his head at a sharp angle, shoulderblades popping grotesquely even through his sweatshirt. Trixie winces. Katya lets out a fully serious moan, and Trixie’s toes curl instinctively at the sound. “I’m dying for a cigarette, and I know you don’t wanna stand around and get emphysema with me.”</p><p>Trixie twists, cracking his own back in a couple places. He’ll beg Katya for a proper massage later, once they’ve finally made it to their hotel. “Sounds good. You want me to get you a coffee?” </p><p>“Mm-hmm. Thank you.” Katya grins up at him, then goes right back to his stretching routine. “And see if they’ve got a spare charger we can borrow!” </p><p>The restaurant is right by the water, in a neat little row with a few other cute shops. There’s a butcher and a green grocer, for fuck’s sake, and a pharmacy across the way. Everything feels sun-bleached and antiquated, like something out of an old picture book or a movie set. Trixie walks closer, examining the sign out front. “Verbena,” he reads aloud. “Work!” A couple of honeybees orbit the lavender in the planter by the window. He gives them a wide berth - respect, not fear, okay - and walks in.</p><p>A bell chimes over his head as he crosses the threshold, and he feels his mouth split into a big, goofy grin. The restaurant, homey and deserted this early, takes up half the interior; the rest is an honest-to-god apothecary, all cool wooden shelves full of shiny glass bottles and candles and soaps, herbs hanging everywhere, a warm smell in the air that reminds Trixie of strong tea. He hears in a back room, which he assumes is the kitchen, the sound of footfalls, soft voices, and a low skittering that it takes him a full second too long to place.</p><p>“Oh, my <i>god!</i>” he squeals as a sweet-faced greyhound gambols toward him, tail wagging, and hefts herself up to place her paws on his chest. “Oh my god, <i>hi!</i> Look at <i>you!</i>”</p><p>“Dolly!” a woman’s voice rings out. Trixie laughs, delighted, into the dog’s big, plaintive eyes. </p><p>“Are you Dolly?” he asks her. “Is that your perfect name? Because you’re perfect?” She wags and wags at him, cranes up to put her nose in his face. </p><p>“Dolly, down, <i>milaya devushka,</i>” the woman says, drawing closer in long, confident steps. “I’m so sorry! She never does this. She must really like you!” </p><p>“Are you kidding?” Trixie exclaims. “This is my dream come true, this is the best day of my life.” Dolly drops down onto all fours, and Trixie lifts his gaze from her to the woman. The smile melts off his face. He sticks a hand out on instinct and catches himself on a nearby counter as he sways, sending a few little jars rattling and skidding over its surface. </p><p>“Oh, hey, whoa,” says Katya, taking a step forward, hands half-extending toward him. “Are you all right?”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>more soon. stick with me! questions, comments, and concerns all greatly loved and cherished.</p><p>also, obviously there's a playlist, and it's right <a href="https://tinyurl.com/vernalis">here</a>.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. amanaemonesia</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>holy smokes i'm so glad people have ANY interest in following me down this bizarre little rabbit hole. i'm tremendously grateful for all of you! the chapter titles come from songs off <a href="www.tinyurl.com/vernalis">this playlist</a>.</p>
<p>this wouldn't exist if i weren't completely head-over-heels for beanierose. read all her works, remind her she's amazing. she deserves it all the time.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He blinks, swallows, blinks. Katya’s still out by the car. Katya’s clean-faced, bald, exhaling clouds of grey smoke into the pink-blue sky. This woman is - she’s too short, for one thing, her jawline an inch too narrow. But the slightly aquiline nose, the dark lashes, the electric blue eyes, the blond waves - like, Katya <em>has</em> that hair, it’s tucked neatly into a suitcase in the back of Trixie’s fucking car right now, and this woman’s wearing it like it’s growing right out of her damn head. It <em>is</em>.</p>
<p>“Are you okay, honey?” she says, a little softer. “Here, why don’t you come take a seat? You’re the first customer of the day, hello, congratulations. Let me get you some water.” Once she seems satisfied that Trixie’s not going to faint on the spot, she gestures broadly at the tables and chairs near the back of the shop like he’s won the whole place on a game show. “Anywhere you’d like. Dolly’s gonna keep an eye on you, okay?”</p>
<p>Trixie nods mutely. The greyhound sashays toward a sunny table in the back, and Trixie follows her as obediently as if she were an actual hostess. He plunks down in the chair facing the door and watches the woman, who is Katya, busy herself behind the counter. “You new in town?” she calls out to him. Her voice is light and smoky, the cadence as familiar as his own handwriting. He wants to smack his head against the table until it clears, until his brain will connect with reality - <em>this isn’t Katya</em> - but he can’t make the pieces fit, can’t make himself believe it.</p>
<p>“Passing through,” he says, with some effort. Dolly curls up by his feet and rests her big thoughtful head against his shoes. He wiggles his toes, feeling her warm weight. The woman laughs softly.</p>
<p>“I figured,” she says, bringing over a jam jar full of water and setting it on the table before him. “We don’t get a lot of… <em>unmarried</em> types around here.”</p>
<p>Trixie’s mouth drops open. Even through the haze of confusion and alarm, he knows when he’s being read. “Excuse me,” he says. He hears his voice lower a few chromatic steps, against his will. “What’s that supposed to mean, exactly?”</p>
<p>The woman grins, showing all her straight white teeth. She’s gorgeous. Trixie’s head is going to explode. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry, I don’t mean - listen,” she says, leaning in a little closer. Her hand is still on the table between them. Trixie looks down, clocks ink on her inner wrist, right where Katya’s is. Emotion wafts over him like the notes of a strange fragrance: confusion up top, a heart of raw fear, and a disorienting base of low, thrumming attraction. He draws his chair back an inch. “I’m a <em>big ol’ queer</em>,” she confides in a stage whisper. “Sorry, I should’ve led with that. Welcome, is what I mean, we’re glad to have you. Coffee?”</p>
<p>Trixie blinks some more, trying to keep up with her rapid pace. He chugs his water while he remembers how to talk. “Yeah,” he says. “Sure, thank you. Actually, can you make it two?” He has the presence of mind to jerk his head toward the door, raising an eyebrow meaningfully. “I’ve got an <em>unmarried</em> friend joining me who’ll want some, too.”</p>
<p>She lets out a quick shriek of laughter at that, the same exact one Katya makes when he lobs Trixie a softball of a setup and he smashes it over the fence. “You got it. Coming right up.” She turns on her heel and heads back toward the counter, her black skirt fluttering as she walks. “If you lose your balance again just yell my name, and I’ll, you know, call the medics as promptly as I can manage. I’m Katya.”</p>
<p>Trixie’s vision inverts. Dolly eases up to her feet, as if sensing this, and lays her heavy head right in his lap. He brings both hands down and strokes the silk of her ears. “Stay here,” he whispers. “Stay with me.”</p>
<p>The door swings open on a soft jangle, and Katya, Trixie’s Katya, steps inside, looking all around in unadorned wonderment. When he spots Trixie and the dog, his eyes and mouth shoot open wide in delight. “Oh, my <em>gawd!”</em> he exclaims, rushing toward them. “Who is this angel?”</p>
<p>“Hi,” Trixie murmurs. He wants to leap to his feet and throw himself around Katya, ground himself against his solid body, but Dolly’s face is warm and soft between his hands. She doesn’t move, but her tail picks up a lazy flick as Katya approaches. “This is Dolly,” Trixie tells him in a low voice. “And <em>that</em>…” he nods toward the counter, where the woman is setting out a pair of mugs and saucers, humming tunelessly to herself, “is Katya.”</p>
<p>His Katya grins, dropping to one knee to greet Dolly head-on. “That’s funny,” he says brightly. “Good name! This place is fucking fabulous, huh? I wanna buy everything! Did you see that incense by the door?”</p>
<p>“No, girl, <em>look</em> at her,” hisses Trixie, flummoxed. “Something weird is going on. Something, like, really weird.”</p>
<p>Katya turns and looks at the woman. She gives him a warm smile, which he returns. “Hello, hi, welcome,” she calls. The shop is small, so she’s barely raising her voice at all. “You want any milk or sugar for your coffee, guys?”</p>
<p>“Hi!” Katya calls back. “Yes, please, as much as you can spare.” He turns back to Trixie and Dolly, grinning. “She is <em>great</em>. That hair!” he whispers.</p>
<p>“<em>Brian</em>.” Trixie feels panic in his wrists. His brain is hot. Katya blinks at him. “Does she look like anyone to you?”</p>
<p>Katya sneaks another glance at her, then shakes his head. “No? Oh, my god,” he coos. “Can we keep this dog?”</p>
<p>“This is Katya’s dog,” Trixie says, keeping his voice as steady as he can. “Who, by the way, is <em>you</em>. She looks <em>just like you</em>.”</p>
<p>Katya’s apostrophe brows inch closer to one another. “Please!” He gets to his feet and settles in the chair opposite Trixie. “She’s a woman. I know I’m stunning, but I’m a big beefy man, Sharon. That, over there? Is a <em>woman</em>.”</p>
<p>The woman in question approaches, her heeled boots drumming the floor in a steady rhythm. She sets Trixie’s coffee down on the table beside the empty water glass, and then holds out Katya’s for him to take. Trixie feels a shriek climbing up from his lungs, the growing sense that he’s lost his fucking mind. “Thank you!” Katya smiles up at her, reaching.</p>
<p>Suddenly, he jolts backward in his chair with a small sound of surprise. The mug has vanished from the woman’s hands and reappeared in pieces on the floor between them. Trixie can see steam rising up from the floor as a dark puddle slowly spreads over the wood.</p>
<p>The woman looks down at the coffee. “I’m sorry,” she says, blinking. She’s still smiling a little, like she’s forgotten to stop.</p>
<p>“No, I’m sure that was me,” Katya says, getting to his feet. Trixie watches the puddle creep toward his shoes. “Oh my god, your pretty mug. I’ll pay for that, I’m so sorry. Here, like, let me help, I can go grab some napkins, or -”</p>
<p>“It didn’t even make a sound,” says the woman, letting out a small laugh. “Look, Dolly didn’t even move. I swear. It just… how did… that’s funny. No, sit down,” she insists. “I can fix this later.”</p>
<p>Katya’s face wrinkles up. He glances at Trixie, unsure, and then back down to the shards of ceramic scattered over the floor in a loose burst, out from a point of impact that doesn’t seem to have occurred. “It’s in, like, a billion pieces,” he points out, wincing.</p>
<p>The female Katya waves this away with a loose, impatient flourish. Trixie’s seen the man across from him perform the same one hundreds of times. “I love a little project,” she says blithely. “Don’t let the clumsy hands fool you! I’m a real crafty bitch when I want to be.”</p>
<p>Katya laughs in real relief. He catches Trixie’s eye again, like he expects him to join in. Trixie just strokes Dolly’s forehead. She’s looking straight up at him with a baleful, disbelieving expression. Trixie’s had lower points than feeling that the only other sane person in the room is a dog, but he can’t think of them, like, at precisely this moment. “I’m like that, too,” Katya’s telling the woman. The tea kettle in Trixie’s brain shrieks. Smoke pours from his ears.</p>
<p>“Yes, you lunatic, you <em>are</em>,” he hisses at Katya. “You’re exactly like that. That’s - that’s <em>you!”</em></p>
<p>Four identical blue eyes stare into him quizzically. He can’t help it; a compulsive peal of laughter bursts out of his mouth. If he’s really lost his goddamn mind, he might as well have a little fun on the way down.</p>
<p>“You really don’t see it?” he demands, gesturing between them. “Really?”</p>
<p>“See what?” both Katyas ask in one voice, and then all the lightbulbs over the counter explode with an electric pop, sending glass raining down everywhere.</p>
<p>Dolly dives under the table, tail curled between her legs. Trixie jumps to his feet on impulse, reaching for Katya’s arm and pulling him tight against him, even though they’re several feet away from the debris.</p>
<p>“Oh my god,” Katya murmurs, and then, glancing down at Trixie’s arm clutched protectively across his chest, adds weakly, “Aww, see? Told you you were a big gay fairy.”</p>
<p>Katya, the woman, plasters herself back against the table. Her red mouth hangs open. She stares at the lights, then down at her empty hands, as if searching for the weapon that shattered all the bulbs. For the first time, she’s completely stopped smiling. “I’m… sorry,” she says slowly, turning to Trixie and Katya.</p>
<p>“Katya!” a woman’s voice calls out from the kitchen. There’s a commotion, a sound like pots and pans clanging together. “What was that?”</p>
<p>“It’s okay, baby,” Katya calls back. She hasn’t budged. “I think.”</p>
<p>Trixie’s grip tightens around his Katya’s - <em>Brian’s,</em> his spinning mind adjusts, this is fucking absurd - arm. “Something is <em>wrong,</em>” he whispers in his ear. “We’ve got to get out of here.”</p>
<p>Brian glances between Trixie’s pleading eyes and Katya’s, but he doesn’t say anything. Trixie thumbs across Brian’s arm, and Brian brings his own hand up to cover his, holding him there.</p>
<p>“Stay, <em>malyshka</em>,” Katya says firmly. Trixie realizes she’s addressing the dog only when she bends to catch Dolly’s eye under the table. As she rises, she says, shrugging, “She’s the only one not wearing shoes.”</p>
<p>“Katya?” A tall, pretty woman pokes her head out from the kitchen, blond braids swinging, wiping her hands on an apron tied around her waist. “What’s - oh, my God. What happened?”</p>
<p>“Be careful!” Katya puts out a hand in her direction. “The glass went everywhere, I don’t know, they all just - “ She flicks her hands open, making an explosion sound with her mouth. The woman, the cook, Trixie assumes, puts her hands on her hips and gives Katya a knowing look, for some fucking reason. Brian rounds on Trixie.</p>
<p>“Okay,” he says loudly, pointing at the cook, full <em>j’accuse,</em> “<em>she</em> is you, if anyone’s somebody!”</p>
<p>“Hi, I’m sorry?” says the cook flatly, as Trixie shrills, “What the <em>fuck</em> are you talking about?”</p>
<p>“Don’t mess with me, Mary!” Brian’s eyes are shot wide. “Look at her! That’s your fraternal fucking twin! Look at the nose!”</p>
<p>Trixie’s jaw drops. “Are you - <em>serious?</em> That’s not me, <em>that’s you!”</em></p>
<p>“What happened?” the cook asks again, carefully stepping over the shards littering the floor to approach Katya, who holds her arms out for her. “Honey, we’ve been open for ten minutes, do you think we could aim for at least an hour without destroying any light fixtures?” She squeezes Katya’s hands, shooting Brian and Trixie a suspicious glance. “Are you okay?” she asks her, more softly. “Did you -” She turns back to the broken glass, then fixes her gaze on Katya, staring seriously into her face. “Do you feel all right?” she says in a low voice.</p>
<p>Katya’s shaking her head hard. “Tracy, I’m fine, something -” She takes a deep breath. “I don’t think that was, you know, <em>me.</em>”</p>
<p>“Look at her <em>face,</em> bitch!” Brian demands, shooting an exasperated hand in the cook’s general direction. “Look at her fucking eyes! Did you go blind back there or something?”</p>
<p>“Is your name Tracy?” Trixie asks her, ignoring Brian completely. There’s a sudden feeling like the floor under his feet has trapdoored out, and he’s got one second to hang in the air like Wile E. Coyote before he shoots straight down to his death.</p>
<p>“No,” she says immediately. Relief pours through him. He feels like he might actually cry.</p>
<p>Katya adds, “I just call her that because she’s so cute when she’s annoyed.”</p>
<p>“Oh, my God,” says the cook again, rolling her eyes. “I’m Trixie. And this is our place, so, if you’re planning on breaking any more of our dishes, could you give me a heads-up directly?”</p>
<p>Trixie sits down hard, nearly missing the chair altogether. Brian’s eyes look like they might pop straight out of his head. Katya says, “They didn’t. He didn’t. It just broke.”</p>
<p>“<em>Trixie,</em>” hisses Brian, jabbing a finger at the cook.</p>
<p>“Katya!” Trixie retorts, trying to keep his voice below a scream. The women both turn at the sound of their names, their actual fucking names.</p>
<p>“Is there a problem?” the cook asks coolly. Trixie knows that voice from his own customer service experience, the practiced tone of professionalism lacquering over bone-deep disdain. He leans forward in his chair.</p>
<p>He says, in the lowest and calmest voice he can muster, “Yekaterina. Right? Yekaterina Petrovna Zamolodchikova.”</p>
<p>She frowns a little. “Uh-huh. Yes, that’s… that’s my name, yes.”</p>
<p>Dolly whines lowly under the table, her tail thudding against the floor. Brian reaches out for him suddenly, claws at his shoulder. “Trixie,” he says again. “I told you. On the highway. I told you.”</p>
<p>“Told me what?” asks the cook. She’s looking between the three of them now, eyes bright and curious. “Katya, do you know these people?”</p>
<p>The woman is shaking her head. “No, they just - no.” She’s staring at Brian intently, though, twisting a lock of her hair between a couple of her fingers. Trixie watches Brian’s hand shoot up automatically toward his shoulder as he stares back at her, seeking a strand of his own to play with.</p>
<p>“You’re not wearing it,” Trixie reminds him softly. “You wanna go out to the car and get it? Wanna show her?”</p>
<p>“To what fucking end, Barbara?” Brian demands. “What, you want me to get in geish and do a number for <em>Katya and Trixie</em> over here?”</p>
<p>“Get what? Show me what?” asks Katya. She addresses Trixie, but she hasn’t looked away from Brian, studying him like she’s trying to commit his face to memory. Which should be pretty fucking easy, since it’s her face, too.</p>
<p>The cook, the other Trixie, has tightened her grip around her Katya’s fingers; Trixie watches the veins in her long, slender hands shift under the skin as she squeezes. “Listen,” she says in a level, steady voice. “If you two need some kind of assistance, if something is <em>wrong</em>, of course we want to help. But if you’re attempting to intimidate us or cause some kind of a scene, please just believe that it isn’t going to work out in your favor.” Trixie feels a spasm under his ribs that might be a laugh. Like he’s stupid enough to pick a fight with a woman in the restaurant industry. Especially this woman.</p>
<p>“No, uh, Ms. <em>Mattel</em>,” Brian says, flashing a glance down at Trixie, “that’s not what we’re trying to do at all.”</p>
<p>Trixie sees confusion, a touch of surprise, register across the cook’s face. “Who are you?” she asks. “Like, who are you, actually?”</p>
<p>The empty jam jar on the table suddenly shudders and falls over, untouched. “Sorry,” Trixie says nonsensically, righting it.</p>
<p>“What the fuck, Trixie, <em>look</em>,” Brian murmurs.</p>
<p>Trixie looks. The jar is full again, the water inside rippling slightly, right in the spot where Katya first put it down for him. He leaps backward, sending his chair screeching a few inches across the floor. Dolly shoots out from under the table, spooked, and starts toward the kitchen and the glass glittering across the floor.</p>
<p>“Dolly!” Trixie’s on his feet before he even realizes it. His voice sounds strange in his ears, until he realizes he and the cook have called out at the same time. They look at each other, bewildered. The dog stops in her tracks and turns toward them, ears flattened back. “Come back here,” he tells her, and she does, trotting directly back to him with her head down. She butts her soft face against his thigh. He laughs low in his throat. “She’s so well-trained,” he tells the women. “I love her.”</p>
<p>Dolly looks between them all, wagging happily. “Clearly, the feeling is mutual,” the cook says, twisting a ring on her middle finger. “She’s not usually like this with strangers.”</p>
<p>“She’s got a good sense for people, though,” Katya adds with a thin smile, as Dolly settles directly between Trixie and Brian. The cook makes a quiet sound, calls out the dog’s name in a low voice.</p>
<p>Dolly’s ears prick up and she goes at once, plastering herself to the cook’s side like a shadow. But after just a moment, she lopes back over to Trixie and sits once again. There’s something in her expression that Trixie might call pointed, if she weren’t a dog.</p>
<p>“To <em>me</em>, baby,” the cook says gently. Dolly gets to her feet, paces a tight circle, and sits again, right by Trixie’s side.</p>
<p>Trixie’s starting to feel like he should apologize, like he should shoo Dolly away, when the cook suddenly blurts, “Oh, my <em>God</em>.” She takes an unsteady step, like the floor has suddenly raked against her favor. “It worked.”</p>
<p>“Baby, what?” Katya asks. “What is it?”</p>
<p>The cook is staring at Dolly, then back up at Trixie’s bewildered face. She turns to Katya sharply. “You did it,” she says quietly. “Katya. Oh my God. You thought it didn’t work. The spell. It did. It <em>worked</em>.”</p>
<p>Katya’s lips part, then close, then open again. “No,” she says slowly. “No, that’s not - that’s not how that -” She pauses. “You really think so?” she asks.</p>
<p>Trixie glances at Brian, who puffs out his cheeks and raises both arms in a solid approximation of the shrug emoji. “Hey, just for me, just for fun, like, hypothetically,” Trixie says, “what worked? Did you say - a <em>spell?”</em></p>
<p>The cook’s entire demeanor melts immediately. Her face breaks open in a petal-soft smile. Trixie, despite himself, feels slightly more at ease. “I’m going to go brew… a fair amount more coffee,” she says. “Would you two mind just staying put for a minute while I do that? And then maybe we can start talking through everything.”</p>
<p>“What a cool idea,” Brian enthuses, in the tone of a fun uncle who’s been made the guest of honor at a child’s tea party. “Honey, why don’t we just sit?”</p>
<p>Trixie eases back into his chair. The cook starts back toward the kitchen without another word. Katya, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, gives them a lopsided smile.</p>
<p>“I’m gonna go get a broom,” she says. “For the glass, not for… not for, like, witch stuff.”</p>
<p>Brian shoots her a big, friendly thumbs-up, and then she’s dashed off on the cook’s heels, leaving them alone with Dolly, who seems fully unbothered by any of this.</p>
<p>They sit in silence for a moment. “So what the fuck exactly do we think is going on here on this day?” Trixie asks, taking the one remaining coffee cup between his hands and breathing in the steam.</p>
<p>“Oh, bitch, I haven’t got the <em>faintest</em> idea,” Brian says cheerfully. “But if I didn’t know any better, I’d say possibly some <em>witch stuff.</em> Yes-and, mama. Sometimes you just gotta ride that lightning, you know?”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>oh boy oh boy. i don't even know, you guys. i do know that i love feedback like trixie loves birds. thank you for reading!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. marathon</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>listen to that playlist, me and vernalis playlist, <a href="https://www.tinyurl.com/vernalis">here.</a> if you're nuts in the same ways that i am nuts, and trying to listen to it like "in pace" with the story, since it soundtracks it roughly chronologically, we are up to "marathon runner."</p>
<p>this is for beanie. most things i do are. but it's also for you! thank you so much for reading this insane thing. every single person who's taken the time to comment, bookmark, or give kudos, you are so meaningful to me.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Trixie is well aware that while the other Katya is sweeping the floor, while the other Trixie is fussing with the coffee maker, he could grab Brian by the hand and make a mad dash for the door, get back in the car and follow the signs back to the highway, back to LA, keep driving until they find someplace they know.</p>
<p>They could do that.</p>
<p>Brian’s been pacing around the store, sometimes touching and examining things, sometimes just chewing his thumbnail. Trixie, due to a combination of mortal fear and the sweet dog chin resting on his knees, can’t move. “Okay,” Brian says after a few moments, coming back to the table with his hands behind his back. “Don’t flip your shit, because then I’ll flip <em>my</em> shit, okay?”</p>
<p>“Fully bold of you to assume my shit isn’t already completely flipped,” Trixie says. He strokes the long planes of Dolly’s face. “My shit is <em>so</em> flipped,” he coos to her. Her eyes bat closed, like this is the best news she’s heard all year.</p>
<p>Brian pulls a newspaper out from behind his back and drops it on the table. “Look at the date, mama,” he says. “The year. Clock that timestamp.”</p>
<p>Trixie blinks at it. “Uh-<em>huh</em>.”</p>
<p>“Maybe you’re picking up what I’m putting down,” Brian says helpfully. “I should be… Jesus Christ, a teenager right now?”</p>
<p>“And I should be much, much, like, <em>so</em> much younger. But this is ridiculous,” Trixie informs him. “This is…”</p>
<p>“You ever hear of Occam’s razor? Simplest solution’s probably the right one?” Brian asks. Trixie nods, after taking a beat to think. “Okay, so, what are the possibilities?” Brian holds up a hand, five fingers shooting out. He pulls them back one by one as he speaks. “We’ve stumbled on some kind of, like, reenactment village set approximately twenty years ago, for some reason, complete with period-accurate newspapers. Our phones fried at exactly the same time because of, I don’t know, some kind of problem with a cell phone tower or something. We both fell asleep while you were driving for long enough that night turned to day, but we never drove off the road because of… luck? Sure, Mary. And those two <em>biological female women</em> with our <em>faces</em> over there have our <em>fake fucking names</em> on their birth certificates because… coincidence.” He curls his fingers into a fist and raises the other hand. “Or, we’ve time-travelled into a parallel universe by magic and that <em>is</em> us.”</p>
<p>Trixie takes this in. “I think Occam’s razor was specifically invented to rule out impossible shit like this,” he points out. But he doesn’t fight him on it, doesn’t argue down a word. If this is hell, if they did die out there on the road, as he suspects they have, at least they’re together. Not such a bad prognosis for the afterlife, he supposes.</p>
<p>“Hi,” Brian says warmly. Katya’s coming back, having cleaned the floor and tucked her broom away neatly in a corner. “Hi, <em>Katya</em>, would you mind telling me if this date is right?” He taps the upper-right of the newspaper with one finger.</p>
<p>She peers at it. “It is,” she says. She pulls up a nearby chair and joins them at the table, her skirt blooming around her. She’s worrying her bottom lip with her perfect teeth. “How… how far have you come?”</p>
<p>Brian smiles. “A long way,” he tells her. Trixie feels it, suddenly, the staggering distance stretching out behind them in a sickening <em>Vertigo</em> zoom. </p>
<p>“<em>Blyad</em>,” Katya sighs. Trixie knows what that one means. “Tracy, I think we might wanna just close up,” she calls over her shoulder. “Can you call up Violet real quick and tell her not to come in today?”</p>
<p>“Already on it,” the other Trixie yells back, as Trixie snorts a little bit of lukewarm coffee up his nose. Brian lets out a high shriek of laughter as he puts it together. Katya looks between them, perplexed, but doesn’t ask.</p>
<p>“Look, okay,” Brian says to Katya. “This might seem a little <em>crazy</em>, but…” He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his wallet. “Here, take a look at this.”</p>
<p>Trixie leans in, too, as Brian slides something out from his wallet toward Katya. She lifts the mini-Polaroid in front of her face, frowning.</p>
<p>“When’d you take this?” she murmurs. “I’ve never seen Tracy do her makeup like…”</p>
<p>“I didn’t know you were carrying this around with you,” Trixie says softly. He can feel pink spreading over his cheeks and down his throat. “That’s so gay.”</p>
<p>Of course, he knows exactly when the photo was taken: backstage, a few months ago. They’re staring straight into the camera, stone-cold and unsmiling, hands clasped tight between them. Trixie’s in a soft pink look, her beat a little gentler than usual. Katya’s wearing a black-and-white chevron minidress and a bright red lip. Her wig’s blunt-banged and flowing past her shoulders in loose waves. The woman sitting between them touches a hand to her identical hair, like she’s afraid Brian might try to snatch it clean off and slam it down askew on his bald skull. “Wait,” she says, with barely-restrained glee. “You dress up...like <em>us?</em>”</p>
<p>“Not on purpose!” Brian says. “That wasn’t, like - we made you up!”</p>
<p>“And anyway, you’re a <em>witch</em>, so,” Trixie says loudly, “let’s cool it on the judgmental tone, okay?”</p>
<p>The other Trixie is approaching now, carrying a tray with coffee and an assortment of truly fierce-looking pastries. Katya waves the photo at her, bouncing in her seat. “Trixie, <em>look!</em>”</p>
<p>“Oh my God, hang on,” she says, setting the tray down gingerly. She cranes to see, then looks back at Trixie with her face tight. “Is that supposed to be… me?” she asks him, brows raised.</p>
<p>He doesn’t know how to answer her. His mouth opens and shuts again. She tries again: “Is that you?”</p>
<p>He nods mutely. She blows out a breath, crossing the room in a few long strides to lock the door and flip the hanging sign to CLOSED.</p>
<p>“Betty’d wanted to come by today and get that lotion,” Katya says, glancing toward the door.</p>
<p>“Oh, wow, a tragedy.” The other Trixie comes back to the table, untying her apron in one smooth gesture as she walks. “She lasted the first hundred and fifty years of her life without any of your help, she can stand another day.” She pulls up another chair and sits behind Katya. Having all four of them circled around the same table has put Dolly into an ecstatic state; under the table, her tail is drumming a breakbeat against the legs of Trixie’s chair. “Okay. Let’s go back to the beginning, right?”</p>
<p>They introduce themselves, properly: <em>TrixieBrianBeatrice</em>, Y<em>ekaterinaKatyaBrian</em>. So, like, as properly as possible. They frame themselves as best they can for each others’ benefit, paint clumsy pictures of two pairs of lives in broad brushstrokes: Los Angeles, this strange little town, music, food, herbs, the ocean, a sleeping dog, a row of brushes on a vanity. Early mornings with the rising sun. Late nights under stage lights. Bob, Violet. Different, the same, different.</p>
<p>“We were driving up to San Francisco for this kind of, like, play we were supposed to be doing, y’know, in our little <em>wigs</em>, and we just… I don’t know. Zapped,” Brian says, throwing his hands up.</p>
<p>“Driving up from LA to San Francisco?” Beatrice and Katya frown at each other. Beatrice says, carefully, “You missed it by about nine hundred miles, I think.”</p>
<p>Katya’s been very quiet, letting Beatrice do most of the talking, which she clearly does not love. But now she says, in a small voice, “I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>It’s like seeing Brian in distress. Trixie can’t stand it. He smothers the impulse to reach across the table and brush her hair off her face, settling instead for drawing Brian’s hand into his lap. Beatrice is on it anyway, nosing at Katya’s shoulder. “Baby, it was an accident,” she reminds her. “And you didn’t even know you’d done it.”</p>
<p>“I’m not trying to hurt anybody,” Katya says. “That’s the whole point, I was just - “ She pauses, blowing out a frustrated breath. Her bangs flutter up and re-settle across her forehead in an untidy spray. “Okay, here’s what happened.” She picks up a scone from the tray and clutches it between two hands. “I’m… it’s small magic, is what I do. Right? I’m a <em>znakharka</em>. A folk healer - well, <em>you</em> know what that means, don’t you,” she says to Brian, who opens his mouth in mute protest. She goes on, before he can make a sound: “Anyway, I was just trying to… I just thought, wouldn’t it be nice if Trixie’s vegetable garden could have a little more diversity, so - I thought maybe I’d try to make some kind of bubble, something to keep the cold away…”</p>
<p>“Baby,” Beatrice says, mouth spreading into a shocked grin, “<em>that’s</em> why? That is so sweet, I hate you! But you could just tell me you’re getting bored of zucchini and tomatoes, bitch! You don’t have to erect a magical greenhouse!”</p>
<p>“Well, I did, I mean, I tried. But it was too big. Too much magic. I couldn’t do it alone.” She hands the scone, which is now piping-hot and fragrant, to Brian. He stares at it, at the steam wisping off of it, at her fingers, with his eyes huge and stunned. “So I, well, it was supposed to be a… a sort of homing spell. To just send a little smoke signal out to any others, anyone like me nearby, who might have the… who might be able to pick it up, who could help me. That’s all it was supposed to do. So much of what I do is about numbers. You know?”</p>
<p>“But you didn’t just send out a signal,” Trixie says slowly.</p>
<p>“You snagged a pair of crossdressers from an adjacent dimension,” Brian offers. He breaks the scone in half and hands the bigger piece to Trixie without looking, almost unconsciously. “You were looking for other witches, but instead you got another…” He flattens his free hand under his chin and gives her a big, cheesy grin. “Another you, but bald.”</p>
<p>“But you’re like me,” Katya says. She sounds confused. Her blue eyes narrow on him. “<em>Ty kak ya, ne tak li?</em>”</p>
<p>Brian wheezes. “<em>Net</em>,” he laughs. “Listen, no, I’m sorry, and also, like, <em>ya znayu tol'ko nemnogo</em>, like, song lyrics and movie quotes, super basic stuff.” Trixie watches him toss the scone gently from hand to hand. “I’m not fluent. And I’m not a witch. I’m… like, I’m from Boston.”</p>
<p>Katya frowns. Her red lips are arranged in almost a pout. It’s extremely cute, Trixie thinks, and then, <em>oh, my god, STOP</em>. “No, I felt it,” she insists. “<em>Ty znayesh' bol'she, chem dumayesh'</em>, honey, I’m sure of it. <em>Vam prosto nuzhno prosnut'sya.</em>”</p>
<p>Trixie glances at Beatrice, quirking a questioning brow. She shrugs, raises one of her own at him. <em>And what?</em> He’s assuming she’s not fluent in Russian, either, but they both obviously speak bitchface loud and clear.</p>
<p>Brian’s just looking at Katya, shaking his head slowly. “I’m awake,” he says quietly. “I’m just not… I don’t know how to help you.”</p>
<p>They stare at each other, Katya resolved and focused, Brian just kind of sheepish. In the silence, Trixie takes a bite of his scone. It’s hot, buttery and dense with a floral kick as he swallows that makes his whole mouth tingle with pleasure. “Oh my god, wow,” he says, mouth full, “this is fucking delicious. Is this magic, too?”</p>
<p>Beatrice toys with the end of her braid, lips twitching up in one corner. “No, I’m just a good cook,” she says. “Not everything is supernatural, Brian. Sometimes a scone’s just a scone.”</p>
<p>—-</p>
<p>After the fourth accident, they decide to just lock up and head back to Beatrice and Katya’s house. About half the time Trixie or Brian try to pick something up, it disappears from their hands and reappears instantly on the floor, soundlessly, in a hundred pieces.</p>
<p>“Don’t apologize. It’s not your fault,” Beatrice is saying to Trixie as she sweeps up the remnants of the shattered pastry tray. Her face isn’t tremendously convincing, though. Neither is her tone. Or her body language.</p>
<p>“Let me at least, like, hold the dustpan for you,” Trixie says mildly. Brian’s helping lock up the glass display shelves in the apothecary with a little gold key, securing the candles and oils and whatever else until the next business day. It’s probably the first retail job he’s ever worked without immediately mopping a bunch of product. Beatrice shakes her head.</p>
<p>“No way.” She glances over at Katya and Brian, engrossed in their tasks. “Nothing personal.” She laughs, suddenly, a loud, surprised sound. “<em>Obviously.</em>”</p>
<p>“No, I get it,” Trixie says. “I mean, honey, I’ve heard of self-loathing, but honey?”</p>
<p>“Hon-<em>ey,</em>” Beatrice agrees, almost reflexively. She glances up at him from the floor she’s just about done re-cleaning, and her eyes, though still guarded, take on a little warmth.</p>
<p>“Right behind you,” Katya says to Brian, laying a hand on his back as she passes him. At once, the glass front of the display case shatters in a shrill hail of falling shards.</p>
<p>“Jesus <em>Christ!”</em> Brian yells, diving out of the way.</p>
<p>“Okay, <em>neither of you touch anything!”</em> Beatrice demands. “Not until we are out of this store!” She whirls to face Katya. “Are you all right? Oh my god, you’re bleeding. Katya!”</p>
<p>“I know why this is happening,” Katya says. “I’m fine, I’m fine. Tracy, listen, I know what this is.” She sucks her bleeding thumb into her mouth impatiently and pops it out again. “This is - the spell, fighting us, fighting the rest of reality. You’re not supposed to be here!” She points excitedly to the dustpan full of broken tray. “You’re not dropping things, you guys. You were never holding them!” Now she clicks her tongue, mimes knocking on an invisible door. “‘Hello, hi, it’s me, hello, it’s the time-space continuum, just here to quickly remind you that something is wrong, there’s a <em>fly in the ointment,</em> Margaret!’ So, boom, explosion, disruption of fragile matter!”</p>
<p>“That totally makes sense!” Brian enthuses.</p>
<p>Trixie and Beatrice share another glance.</p>
<p>“Why are you smiling?” Beatrice asks slowly. “Honey, this sounds… really bad.”</p>
<p>“Oh, it’s very bad,” Katya says. “But it’s kinda cool, right? Magic! Anyway, now we just have to undo the spell. Everything that’s done can be undone.” She turns to Brian with a bright smile. “And you’re going to help me, <em>moya vedmachik.</em>”</p>
<p>Brian cracks up, helplessly. “I am not a <em>witch</em>, bitch!”</p>
<p>“Got it. Of course not. Well, it’s too bad, because you’re going to have to be my apprentice anyways,” she sighs, heading for the door and tugging it open. “After you, boys. Assuming your car hasn’t caught fire or exploded, you can follow us back to the house, and we’ll get this thing cooking.”</p>
<p>“Keep a little distance, though,” Beatrice says, looping her arm around Katya’s waist, “just in case it decides to.”</p>
<p>Trixie opens his mouth, feeling briefly very attacked, then shuts it again. He can’t exactly blame her for being cautious. He turns to Brian with a smirk ready to go on his lips, angling for a quick moment of <em>this bitch!</em> solidarity, but Brian’s just gazing between Trixie and Beatrice and Katya with a look of stunned, bemused pleasure, like everyone’s remembered his birthday except for him.</p>
<p>—-</p>
<p>By the time they’re back at Katya and Beatrice’s house and as settled in as they can be, the post-dawn chill is gone from the air and the sun is high. Dolly shoots around the house, a long grey arrow weaving excitedly between their legs. Beatrice opens the back door for her and Katya goes immediately to the living room and returns with an armload of huge leather books, bending under their weight. “<em>Moya vedmachik,</em> please,” she says, and Brian rushes forward to relieve her of a few. Beatrice clears counter space with a chef’s practiced grace, whirling clutter and a few plants out of the way, and Katya and Brian drop the books with a portentous <em>thud</em>.</p>
<p>“What do you need me to do?” Beatrice asks. “Should I call Dela and Jinkx?”</p>
<p>Katya hoists herself up onto the kitchen island and shifts forward on her arms like a gymnast on a pommel horse, into Beatrice’s space. “You always know what to do, Tracy,” she says, then leans forward the last inch for a kiss. “I love you so much. Yes, please.” She fixes her sparkling blue eyes on Trixie. “Honey, can you go grab Dolly? Since you’re clearly her favorite? We’re going to be spending a lot of time today out in that garden and it’d be a really inconvenient time for her to try and snack on any of our herbs. And as for you!” She whirls toward Brian, taking both of his hands in hers. “You’re going to help me go through these books and look for anything that might be, you know, a step in the right direction. A spell to unmake a spell, or a, like, a banishing spell?”</p>
<p>“If you banish us—Dolly!” Trixie calls, swinging open the door, before turning back. “If you banish us, where do we go?”</p>
<p>“I can’t read these, mama,” Brian says quietly, flipping through the yellowed pages of a tome that looks about three centuries old. “What language is this?”</p>
<p>“Sure you can,” Katya says warmly. “Try again. And - I don’t know. Brian, uh, Trixie. I don’t know. But we’re gonna figure it out, aren’t we?”</p>
<p>Trixie turns to Brian, who’s turning pages faster, now, his eyes wide. “Are you?” he asks softly.</p>
<p>Brian looks at him, nods slowly. “I think so,” he says, voice faintly colored with hope.</p>
<p>Beatrice, who has slipped away, suddenly speaks from the other room. “I know!” she’s saying, her voice pink and light. “It’s been too long. Us, too! So much! Listen, we’ve got a little bit of a situation out here…”</p>
<p>Dolly ambles back in through the back door, sitting immediately at Trixie’s feet. “Oh, my god,” he coos, dropping to both knees before her. “You are such a wonderful pet.” She nuzzles her heavy head against his shoulder, and he wraps both arms around her long, sloping neck and forgets to be anxious.</p>
<p>“Hey, <em>baba</em>, this one,” says Brian, jamming his finger against a page in one of the books. She swats at him, cackling.</p>
<p>“Don’t <em>baba</em> me, bitch!” She cranes to see. “Oh, shit, <em>moya vedmachik,</em> this might really work!”</p>
<p>“What might?” Trixie asks. “And what do you keep calling her? Please, I was already stupid and then I time-traveled today, give a bitch a break.”</p>
<p>Both Katyas laugh in unsettling harmony. Trixie sees a nearby pillar candle start to wobble, as if destabilized by the force of the sound. “Brian,” he calls out, pointing with his chin, and Brian snatches it up before it can fall to the ground. He grins at Trixie, grateful. It floods through him like sunlight through a snapped-open curtain.</p>
<p>“She’s making fun of me,” Brian tells him, rolling his eyes. Katya, poring over the page in front of her, blows her bangs off her face again. “She’s callin’ me her little witch.” His fingers trace along the intricate grooves carved in the pillar candle. Trixie watches them move from his spot on the floor, where he lives now, as Dolly hasn’t budged an inch.</p>
<p>“I am not making fun of you,” Katya says. “Honey, this is a great find.” She turns to Trixie, making deliberate eye contact. “It’s a tidying spell,” she explains to him. She sounds exactly like Brian explaining a yoga pose, eager to teach at any skill level. “A putting-things-away spell. It’s super basic magic when it’s used for something like cleaning up a small space or reorganizing a bookshelf. That’s why it’s such an elegant solution.” She turns her brilliant grin on Brian, and he scrunches his face up in undisguised, self-conscious pleasure at the praise. “It might be too small to work on its own, though.”</p>
<p>“Can we combine it with something else?” Brian asks, marking the page in the book with a fallen sprig from a nearby plant. He starts carding through the rest of the tome with more purpose than before, eyes sharp and focused. Katya’s grin goes tighter, pointy at the edges.</p>
<p>“For someone who isn’t a witch,” she says lightly, “you certainly are thinking like one.”</p>
<p>Brian laughs softly, glancing at Trixie. “If improvising with limited material makes you a witch, then all drag queens are witches, okay.”</p>
<p>“All right!” Beatrice says, bursting back into the room. Dolly clambers up and goes to her at once, making Trixie feel weirdly and unreasonably jealous. “So I talked to Jinkx and Dela. I mean, I tried. This… “ She gestures vaguely at Trixie on the floor, at Brian hovering by Katya at the counter, “...was kind of hard to sum up.”</p>
<p>“What did they say?” Katya asks. She nudges Brian and taps a passage in another book, indicating he should hold her place, and goes to Beatrice at once. She leans up for a kiss. “You are the most amazing, resourceful woman in the world. Thank you for thinking of calling.”</p>
<p>“We’ve got to move fast,” Beatrice says, though she takes her time returning the kiss. It’s like hearing a recording of your voice and realizing it sounds different than you thought. Trixie’s stomach feels tight. “Tonight the moon is waning crescent. It’ll be rising just before dawn. And once it sets…”</p>
<p>“Oh, shit,” Katya says. She draws back. “<em>Vedmachik</em>, I need you to read me all the ingredients for that tidying-up spell, okay? Yes, you <em>do,</em>” she adds firmly, holding up a hand, as Brian opens his mouth to argue. “You know what to say. You know all the words. Read for me.”</p>
<p>Brian glances at Trixie. Trixie clambers to his feet, twisting his mouth into a smile, and goes to him. They all stand there on opposite sides of the kitchen island, considering each other like a pair of reflections. “Come on, you nervous old queen,” Trixie murmurs into his ear. “Don’t be so dramatic. You love to read, don’t you?”</p>
<p>Brian laughs at this, surprised, and Trixie watches his back straighten a tiny bit. In a low, measured voice, he begins to read aloud from the book.</p>
<p>Cold tiptoes down Trixie’s spine. It’s not Russian, or English, or anything he’s ever heard before. Katya smiles at Brian, then up at Beatrice and Trixie, a hint of told-you-so in it. Silently, she goes to the counter for a pen and paper and begins to take down whatever it is Brian’s saying. Trixie’s not even aware of the other sound in the room until it’s so loud that he has to fight not to cover his ears, until Brian has to raise his voice over it: all the glass in every cabinet has begun to vibrate with a clear soprano song, like dozens of fingertips circling every rim at once in a dissonant, eerie symphony.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>i love to hear your thoughts, feelings, speculations! thank you thank you for taking the time to go on this weird little journey with me. stay safe!!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. duet</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>endless thanks to the polycule for their help and inspiration, to beanie for writing the most perfect fic and for being the most incredible person, and to you for reading. i'm not gonna go on too much! just a couple more fun little notes at the bottom. i hope this brightens your week a little. </p><p>songs from chapter titles (and several others) are <a href="https://www.tinyurl.com/vernalis">here.</a></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Beatrice and Katya’s house has a massive, sprawling back garden; the benefits of life outside a major city, Trixie supposes. He clocks a pen toward the back, and a chicken coop. There’s a wildness to it, the crawling vines and bright sprays of flowers, not to mention the hens occasionally wandering through, that’s giving Trixie something akin to agoraphobia. He stands in the doorway, watching Katya as she guides Brian through the plants, occasionally plucking something carefully free to hold before his wide eyes. Brian’s nodding at everything she says, sometimes letting out a delighted bark of laughter, sometimes saying something back that makes her shake her fists in the air and wheeze in a way that’s dizzyingly familiar. Of course they’re cracking each other up. A laugh bubbles up in his own chest, just watching them.</p><p>“In or out?” comes Beatrice’s voice, suddenly beside him. He jumps and turns to see her standing there, one eyebrow lifted. She’s holding a steaming mug in either hand. “We’ve got enough problems in this house today, don’t you think? We don’t need crane flies, too.”</p><p>“Oh my god, right. Sorry.” He shoulders the door the rest of the way open and steps out onto the back porch, then holds it open for her. She comes blinking into the sunlight; it’s early spring, still, and the sun’s already coasting back down into their eyes. She deposits one mug on the railing and holds out the other toward him. </p><p>“Two hands,” she says seriously. “I’m not letting go until you’re positive you have it.” </p><p>He wraps both hands around the mug, jigsawing them around hers, even as the heat stings the pads of his fingers. She narrows her eyes at him. “Girl, it’s burning me, come on,” he says. “I’m holding it. With every ounce of concentration I can manage at this fragile time.” </p><p>He sees a little twitch of amusement under her chin, but she keeps it all off her face. “Positive?” she stresses again.</p><p>“You’re impossible,” he tells her. “Has anyone ever told you that? Because I get it kind of a lot.” He steps in closer, dips down to bring his lips to the mug and takes a cautious sip. “It’s hot, but we’re on the same plane of existence. See?” </p><p>She doesn’t say anything, but she lets go. He readjusts his grip, pursing his lips. “What is it, anyway? Some kind of, like, witches’ brew?” He sips again. It’s good, spicy and a little tart.</p><p>She’s drinking hers as he speaks, and takes her time swallowing before she answers. “It’s hibiscus apple tea,” she informs him. “But that was a really good guess. <i>Witches’ brew.</i>”</p><p>“All right, you know <i>what?”</i> he says, and she does break this time, laughing softly into her mug. He watches her, trying to look and not stare. She looks more like him than any relative he’s met, more than anyone in any family photo he’s ever seen, but there’s a distance, a plane of glass between them that Katya and Brian don’t seem to be bumping up against at all. In the garden, Katya grabs a fistful of tight white flowers from a nearby plant and rubs them between her palms, then brings their dust up to Brian’s face for him to smell. He leans in, his eyes closing softly, and when they open again he lets out a thrilled shriek, and then she does, too, for some reason. </p><p>“God, look at them,” Trixie marvels, shaking his head. “It’s fucking creepy, isn’t it?” </p><p>Beatrice makes a noncommittal noise. She takes another sip of her tea. Her lashes get long when she looks down into the mug. “Takes a lot to creep me out these days,” she says after a moment. “I mean, Katya’s always a little on the ooky-spooky side, but.” </p><p>“Oh, cool, so you’ve also shacked up with the Crypt Keeper? We stay aiming high, don’t we?” Trixie asks her, and she really laughs this time, a quick arpeggio of it, steadying her mug so she won’t spill it as she doubles over. He feels himself grinning, showing her his crooked teeth, always pleased to win over a cold room even for just a second. Of course he’d be his own toughest crowd. </p><p>There’s a looseness to her as she laughs that suggests a body at home, earned confidence. She moves like she’s never been afraid. It’s not like Trixie thinks that’s true, actually, not if her life’s been anything like his, but. He laughs, too, glancing away, abruptly overcome at the sight of her.</p><p>“What?” </p><p>”Nothing.” He‘s talking to his shoes. He can feel her stillness, how she’s solid here, level. He swallows his discomfort, makes himself look at her. Honesty is easier in heels, and his feet are flat on the ground. “If I had eyes like yours, I wouldn’t need makeup,” he says, stupidly. </p><p>She snorts. “You do have eyes like mine. You just can’t see them on the front of your face.”</p><p>He doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just drinks, watches the two Katyas weaving through the plants in the backyard. He can hear Katya explaining things to Brian, naming herbs as she carefully trims and prunes and hands them over to him, half in English and half in Russian. He nods his head at her, uh-huh uh-huh. Trixie catches what he can - this is hyssop for cleansing, this is calamus for focus, this is white clover and cassia and rosemary. Luck, purity of heart, mending. Brian’s eyes are a pair of soup spoons, taking it all in. Trixie glances at Beatrice. “So what’s the deal with the phone call?” he asks her. “Like, you said it was… what did you say? Some kind of crescent moon?”</p><p>Beatrice grimaces. “So, Katya’s aunts are the ones that taught her all this stuff,” she explains, watching the witch and her apprentice drift through the flowers. She keeps her voice low, like she might disturb them with too much noise. “They told me that the waning crescent’s good for clearing the air, or, like, for gently lifting curses, amicable breaks, that kind of thing.” Trixie nods like he gets it, because he’s a liar. Beatrice takes a deep breath and goes on, “But if we miss it, there’s no moon tomorrow night. Dark moon. And if we’re still trying to put you back where you came from under a dark moon, there’s a chance we could end up…” She trails off. </p><p>Trixie swallows. “Like, is it bad?” he prompts. </p><p>Her face takes on a look he can’t totally read. Her eyes get softer, like they did in the shop when she realized who they were, why they seemed so afraid. A little slip of a veil falling away from her features, showing skin underneath. “It could be bad,” she agrees, voice mild. </p><p>Trixie nods. He drinks his tea, which has lost all its flavor. In the yard, Brian and Katya are intently studying a cluster of yellow flowers, occasionally looking up at each other with perfect twin smiles. “So Brian and I could be, like…what. <i>Banished</i> banished? <i>Gone</i> gone?”</p><p>“She knows what she’s doing,” Beatrice says. Which is not the same thing as no, Trixie notices. “We have to trust her. Them.”</p><p>He wraps both hands tighter around his mug. In any world, it’d be likely to slip through his fingers at a moment like this. “Sorry, you just seem, like, really calm,” he tells her, a little louder than he means to. “This kind of thing happen all the time around here? Just a cute little life-or-death weekend spellcasting sesh?”</p><p>She laughs through her nose. “Not exactly.” Her fingers come up to toy with one of her braids. Her ring catches the light, glinting in the sun. </p><p>“Wow, that’s so pretty,” he says. “Can I see? Does that, like, sorry, is that so annoying?”</p><p>“No, sure. Here.” She holds her hand out, and he leans in eagerly. It’s an inky black stone in a delicate setting, elegant and simple as the end of a sentence. He raises his eyes to her face. She’s looking at the ring, then back out at her Katya with a milky smile. It’s like Trixie’s vanished already. </p><p>He asks, “Is it a wedding ring? Are you two married?” </p><p>She fixes him with a wry look. “What do you think?”</p><p>“I dunno, bitch,” he says, bristling. “Like, she’s your spinster aunt, maybe?”</p><p>She caws with laughter, jerking her hand away from him. God, it’s bad. He’s sorry to everyone he’s ever met, if his sounds like that. He laughs, too, at the absurdity of this whole fucking thing, and a few birds flap out of a nearby tree and take to the skies, affronted. “That’s good,” Beatrice says, catching her breath. “Oh, she’s gonna love that one, I’m gonna use that.” She wrings the last bit of laughter out of herself, nothing wasted, and sighs contentedly. “And what about you? Just a pair of… fussy bachelors?” </p><p>“Shut up, you whore,” he snips, making her laugh again. The Katyas turn at the sound, deerlike. Brian’s smile is so luminous. He looks so young, suddenly, that Trixie’s throat gets tight. “We’re not married,” he tells Beatrice softly. “Not, like… I love him, though.” He considers his hands, framing the mug. No nails, no jewelry. “We keep talking about it, but like… we have this really good thing, you know? It feels like bad luck to mess with it.”</p><p>Beatrice nods. She can hold silence in a way he can’t, let it light on her hands like songbirds in a fairytale. He watches it gather around her, trying to be still and quiet like that. He knows they’re the same, somehow, but they’re like one cask of wine split between two completely different vessels. The taste isn’t the same. He looks at her as much as he dares, wondering if she feels it, too, the hollow in him where she’s full. </p><p>“You know,” she says, after a little while, “I didn’t used to feel this way, but sometimes I think the universe is trying to tell you something. You know? Like, isn’t luck kind of something you create?”</p><p>He shrugs. “You’re probably right.” </p><p>More silence settles between them. The heavier it gets, the less he finds he notices it. </p><p>“How many years from now are you?” Beatrice asks quietly. “Where you are?”</p><p>He tempers his answer. Like if he doesn’t give her the year, he can retain a shred of sanity. “A few,” he says. She nods. “A couple… fuck, a couple decades, I guess.”</p><p>If this shocks her, she doesn’t show it at all. “Are things…  better?” she asks, sweeping her hand out as if to encompass the whole world within that concept, within <i>things.</i></p><p>Trixie really thinks about it. “Some of them really are,” he says, nodding. “Some of them are worse, obviously. The less you know, like, the better, believe me. But.” He nods at Brian, Katya, the ring on Beatrice’s finger. “We can all get married, now.”</p><p>Beatrice takes a large, theatrical sidestep away from him. “Um, no thanks,” she says with a grimace. </p><p>“You bitch!” he cackles, miming a swat in her direction. She whirls away, laughing. “I mean it,” he insists. “Oh my god, you know what I mean. We can do whatever we want, now, basically.”</p><p>Beatrice hums at this, nodding. “I guess that’s something to look forward to. It’s none of my business, but it kind of seems like maybe you should be taking advantage. I mean, we would.” She glances over at the two Katyas in the yard, laughing together, trailed now by a small procession of chickens. Trixie glances at Beatrice, who doesn’t react to this new development at all. Okay, then. “He seems… really sweet,” she tells him, and Trixie’s chest swells with completely unreasonable pride. </p><p>“He is.” Brian’s on his knees, face bursting in delight as a chicken hops up onto his lap. “There’s nobody else like him,” Trixie says, and then, realizing, “well…”</p><p>Beatrice makes a small, amused sound. “We’re lucky,” she observes. “I guess that must be true wherever we are.”</p><p>There’s a clutch in Trixie’s throat. He swallows it away, nods. Beatrice knocks gently into his shoulder with her own. “Come on,” she says. “They’re going to be working on this for hours, and there’s gonna be a lot to do before we sleep.”</p><p>“Sleep?” Trixie repeats, like an idiot. Beatrice tugs the screen open and goes inside, kicking a leg back to hold the door for him. He hustles after her without even thinking about it. </p><p>“We’re gonna have to do this spell at dawn when the moon is fresh. I mean, you can sleep in your car, if you want,  but there’s a guest room, which, I don’t know, I’d imagine would be more comfortable. But first, you’re gonna help me make dinner, <i>carefully,</i> and then we can feed the chickens. Okay?”</p><p>Trixie gapes at her. But when she turns on her heel back toward the kitchen, he can do nothing but follow. </p><p>---</p><p>He chops vegetables, slowly. He rubs Dolly’s ears and chin, keeps her out from under the witches’ feet. He tries to make himself useful to Beatrice, who gives him firm, assured directives, easy steps he can follow, as if she can intuit that his experience in a kitchen is mostly confined to poking microwave buttons and dropping bags of takeout on the table. Take a fistful of flour and sprinkle it there. Run and grab me that butter dish by the sink. Add a little salt to that water. A little, not a pinch. More than that, oh my god, come on, Trixie. </p><p>“I’m sorry!” he half-shrieks, bubbling with nervous laughter. “Where we’re from, like, I’m not a cook, okay?”</p><p>“Which is shocking,” Beatrice says seriously, “with your calm disposition and your natural intuition…” </p><p>“Girl, this is so perfect,” Trixie says loudly to Brian, who glances up from the root he’s mortar-and-pestling to give him a moony <i>go-on</i> grin. “Like, you’re a mystical earth witch, and I work in a <i>kitchen.</i>”</p><p>“Yeah, my Michelin stars and I are really bummed about how things have turned out for us,” Beatrice says, moving past him to the pot on the stove to add still more salt with a smooth flick of her wrist. “Did you want to talk a little more about how you put on lipstick for a living, and how that’s all going for you?” </p><p>Brian guffaws an “Oh, <i>bitch!”</i>, and he and Katya crack up. “It’s a lot like what you do, but I get to wear better shoes,” Trixie says lightly, turning to face her, grabbing a fork out of the air as it leaps off the counter like a shining fish. </p><p>“How very fabulous for you. Can you get the third-cup measure from that drawer over there?” Beatrice says, nearly gently, and Trixie bites his tongue so he won’t stick it out at her and goes.</p><p>He offers to do the dishes after dinner, but gets waved away by the women before his tongue can even loop out the question mark. Beatrice is clutching a plate against her chest like a teddy bear. Like it won’t just blink into shrapnel on the floor if it wants to. He leaves them, shoulder to shoulder, by the sink, and goes to Brian, still hunched over one of the books like he’s cramming for an exam. He doesn’t look up, but he holds both arms out and coos, “<i>Tracy,</i>” in a sweet rasp. It’s not usually their style in front of other people, but… they’re not, really. Other people. Trixie goes to him and cuddles him close, pressing his lips to Brian’s forehead, the hollow of one cheekbone. Holding him is an unthinkable relief, knowing he’s the only precious thing in this whole fucking reality that won’t break in Trixie’s hands. </p><p>“Look at you go,” Trixie says finally, hooking his chin on Brian’s bony shoulder. “Like, I didn’t even know you knew how to read English, let alone…” While Brian bats at him, play-affronted, Trixie looks at the words in his book. It’s not like any alphabet he’s ever seen. The tiny curls and scratches start making him seasick at once, shooting off across the page in seemingly every direction. There are drawings, too, vegetables and planets and humanoid figures contorted in unsettling knots. As he looks at it, he can feel his mind starting to go pale at the corners, like plastic bent beyond its limits. He looks away, and it eases back into order immediately. “Can you really understand this?” </p><p>Brian nods. He fully settles his stunned gaze on Trixie. “I don’t know how,” he whispers. “I just can.” </p><p>Dishes clatter in the sink and they both whip their heads over to see the damage, but there’s no tense hunch in either of the women’s shoulders. Just regular dishwashing noise. A scone is just a scone, Trixie thinks, staring at the back of Beatrice’s long neck. “She told me about the moon,” Trixie says lowly, nodding in her direction. “About the, the dark moon, or.” </p><p>“Uh-huh.” Brian arcs his thumb over Trixie’s wrist. “But we’ve got a pretty nifty little recipe going over here, mama, I like our chances.” He’s looking at the women now, too, and Katya, as if sensing this, flashes him a movie-star grin over her shoulder, which he returns. Turning back to Trixie, he continues, “It’s a lot of work, but, like, I can do it. I know how. She’s teaching me. Well, like, she says she’s just <i>reminding</i> me. She knows so much.” </p><p>Trixie thinks all the way back to Brian fanning out his tarot cards on the bed between their bodies, the very first night they spent together. <i>I’m an amateur.</i> Sure, Mary. “It’s good to know you’re fully crazy in this universe, too,” he says. “Imagine if, like… she was a data processing analyst or something. That would somehow be so much harder to grasp. And I’m, like, a - “ </p><p>“Garbage truck driver,” Brian suggests helpfully. “Sure, actually, I can see that for you.” </p><p>Trixie snorts. “You cunt!” He leans in to softly teethe at Brian’s ear, making him purr. The air gets warm around his face. “You got a minute to sneak off with me?” he murmurs. “Maybe she’s got a Room of Requirement upstairs with a bed and some surfaces that aren’t covered in, like, tasteful nature-dyke decor.” </p><p>Brian lets out a low groan like an injured animal. “Trixie, I don’t think I’m even gonna sleep tonight. We have so much to do, and there’s so much…” He sweeps a hand over the books, the tools, the powders and herbs that make up his strange workstation. “There’s so much I still need to learn,” he says, kind of like an apology, but also kind of like a thrilling secret. </p><p>“No, of course,” Trixie agrees. “Obviously. That’s way more important.” He smooths his palm over the side of his face. Touching him feels vitally important, the only kind of spell Trixie knows that always works.</p><p>“She’s so sure of everything, it’s psycho,” Brian says, biting his lip. He’s looking at the back of her head again, her long blonde waves, as she talks close and serious to Beatrice. Trixie can see in Brian’s expression that she hung the moon personally, made the stars herself just so she could blow them from her palm into his eyes like glitter. “She makes it harder to be scared.”</p><p>“<i>Are</i> you scared?” he asks.  </p><p>Brian laughs, <i>HUH!</i> “Aren’t <i>you?</i>”</p><p>Trixie’s not in the business of lying to him. “Of course I am,” he says. “But I’ve been watching the two of you together all day, and it’s fucking weird, but it’s obviously working.” He nods, and Brian mirrors him. “You’ve got this.” </p><p>Brian tangles his fingers up with Trixie’s. “May I have a small kiss?” he whispers. </p><p>“Fag.” He’s already leaning in, though. A few pages of the book flutter like leaves in a draft as their lips meet. </p><p>It’s over too soon, Brian pulling away as Katya comes suddenly swooping over, smiling at both of them like Miss Spooky America. “<i>Time to make the poultice,</i>” she says in a familiar croak. Then her brows knit together. “Does that reference still read, wherever you’re from?”</p><p>Brian shrieks in glee. Trixie slips away, leaves them to each other, idly searching for Dolly on the floor to give him something to do with his hands. Then Beatrice, on the other side of the kitchen, catches his eye. She’s looking at him like she does, steady, recognition and dry amusement. She’s got a bottle of wine in one hand, which she tilts meaningfully in his direction. He goes to her, holding back a laugh.</p><p>“You’re gonna trust me with a wine glass?” he asks, eyebrows up. </p><p>“Absolutely not.” She shows him the cups in her other hand: one a glass, the other a green plastic tumbler, some true child’s-birthday-party bullshit. Trixie squawks in surprised laughter.</p><p>“All right, fair,” he says. Brian and Katya are huddled with their heads together, lost in each other. She’s looking at him like she already knows how badly he needs something, anything to loosen up the knots in his brain. She probably does, too. “Pour up, girl,” he tells her. Her mouth ticks up on one side. She tilts her head at him in a gesture that could be read as inviting, but with her locked-up eyes it’s less <i>come-hither</i> than <i>that’ll do, pig.</i> He doesn’t take it personally. The night is going to be long enough without any bruised egos. She pours. He takes his little cup, carefully, using both hands, and gives himself over.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>your feedback keeps me going. i know how much harder we all have to work for the energy during this weird time, and that you continue to dig down and find things to say to me about my weird little experiment makes me feel so, so fortunate. thank you so much for taking the time. </p><p>the book the katyas are reading from is loosely based (visually) on the Voynich manuscript! if you want a really fun way to kill some time, i recommend getting lost in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript"> its wikipedia page</a> if you haven't before. ooky spooky! i love you all!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. frontier</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>ohhhh boy oh boy. you guys. this one is wild, and i'm so, SO glad you're along for the ride with me. i've been so excited to post this one. if you listen to nothing else on <a href="https://www.tinyurl.com/vernalis">the playlist,</a> please check out "frontier" by holly herndon. it is The Vibe, and it is also so, so good.</p>
<p>i wrote this for beanie. i write mostly everything for her, but especially this. when you write something for someone that smart, you end up pushing yourself into weirder, more interesting, more adventurous places than you ever thought you would. i'm grateful to her for that. and i'm grateful to the polycule for their love, and i am SO RIDICULOUSLY grateful to all of you for reading. okay. that's enough from me. sorry.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He’s standing in the driveway, trying to coax a goat off the roof of a pickup truck. It’s his truck, his goat. Come on, Cash. Come on, that’s enough. The goat bleats at him. His bare feet are covered in snow. He holds out his hands, watches them dot with flakes, start to disappear under white. The goat screams.</p>
<p>He’s leaning back against the kitchen counter. He’s frightened, paralyzed with fear. Katya is speaking to him in a low, cautious voice. It’s strange to be afraid of Katya. It’s not supposed to be funny, he’s saying. I wouldn’t joke about this. Not with you. The goat clambers to its feet. Katya breathes out, and all the candles in the room light at once. Katya is saying, It’s all true.</p>
<p>He can feel his throat strain from screaming, but his voice is a whisper. You lied to me, he says or doesn’t say. You let everyone laugh at me behind my back. You hurt me, this hurts.</p>
<p>Katya, cradling the goat, says, You said you wouldn’t date a queen. He’s holding out a new dress for Trixie to wear. He says, There’s a circle around the moon tonight.</p>
<p>Trixie looks down at his hands. He’s holding a red apple. He swings it out in front of him, and Katya drops to his hands and knees, crawls to him, eats it from his palm.</p>
<p>He looks up at him with wide blue eyes, mouth wet and red. Where’s your second shadow, he asks.</p>
<p>He glances over his shoulder. Beatrice is right there, chin nocked into the crook of his neck. She puts her lips to his ear and whispers, <em>there’s a part of me that’s you -</em></p>
<p>---</p>
<p>He wakes. Long fingers brush his shoulder, shake him gently. “You know what,” he hears himself say in a faraway voice, “I wished for you, too.”</p>
<p>“Honey.” That’s Katya’s voice. His Katya, his Brian. He knows that. He opens his eyes and looks up, blinks, blinks again.</p>
<p>“Which one are you?” he asks, frowning. He reaches a hand up for her dark, lovely mouth, and she pulls back slightly. “Are you… painted?”</p>
<p>“Don’t touch,” she says. “It’s still setting, bitch.” Brian, then. Trixie tries to sit straight up, but something pulls. He looks down. Beatrice’s arm is slung over him. She’s got his wrist in her hand. If he concentrates, he can feel the spot on his shoulder where her warm cheek presses in. A rush of affection for her sweeps through him, and it’s like looking at herself in the mirror, feeling beautiful.</p>
<p>He hears a stirring behind him. She mumbles, “I’m just down here meditating…”</p>
<p>“Tracy?” comes the other Katya’s voice. “Come on, baby.”</p>
<p>“…for fun and on purpose,” she slurs in his ear. He shifts onto his back, nudging her over enough to wake her. She grumbles, tonguing a strand of her hair out of her mouth. Trixie sits up, stretching. He aches. He feels warm and elastic. He reaches down and brushes the hair away for her while she’s still too sleepy to give him shit for it, runs a thumb over her cheekbone while he’s there. Brian follows Trixie’s hand with his shadowed, lashed eyes, grinning.</p>
<p>“Why’re you in face?” Trixie asks him. His voice is hoarse. “What the fuck, does the spell require a fucking eight-count?”</p>
<p>“I asked to see,” says Katya softly. “I wanted to.”</p>
<p>Trixie looks at Brian. She’s Katya. She’s not padded, but she’s wearing a dress she likes, an off-the-rack black jersey number she packed just because it’s comfortable. She’s wearing that hair, Katya’s hair, loose and cascading around her shoulders. Glancing between their faces, only her slightly-wider jaw gives her away. “You look beautiful,” Trixie tells her.</p>
<p>“Oh, please,” Brian scoffs. She’s practically glowing.</p>
<p>Beatrice pushes herself up on one arm beside him. He grins at her, and her fingers inch over on the mattress to land on top of his. He squeezes once. Getting to his feet to stand beside Brian is an effort. His whole body groans.</p>
<p>“I love you and good morning,” Katya coos, dropping down onto the edge of the bed to kiss Beatrice. “You two got a little sleep?”</p>
<p>Beatrice nods. “Weird dreams,” she yawns, combing her hair forward with her fingers and then twisting it back behind her head in a knot. She looks at Trixie sideways. “You have any?”</p>
<p>“Uh-huh.” He’s up now, letting Brian circle his waist, bring her other hand up to Trixie’s face to stroke a wavy circle around his eye. If he’s ever awake at this hour, he’s usually peeling herself out of face, ears still ringing with club noise. His body wants the bed, wants Beatrice’s warm weight against his back.</p>
<p>“I know, honey,” Brian whispers, like she’s read Trixie’s mind. “But it’s time. The sun’ll be up soon.”</p>
<p>He shrugs back into yesterday’s clothes. The witches go ahead of them, chattering in their low Russian-English patois down the stairs. Beatrice dresses with her back turned. He watches her long muscles ripple as she works her sports bra back over her head. “How’s Cash?” he asks her.</p>
<p>Her head drops down. She’s laughing. Her yellow hair spills from its makeshift bun down past her shoulders. “He’s fine now,” she says, turning to look at him. “He’s in the pen in the yard. Maybe, if there’s time, you can…” She breaks off. There isn’t.</p>
<p>He’s hovering by the door, working the groove of the wood grain with his thumbnail. “I’m so scared,” he tells her with a dry laugh.</p>
<p>She rises, goes to him with a hand held out. He sinks his fingers against hers, ignoring how the glass rattles in the windows. “Said that in my dream,” she says. “It made my hands shake.” She gets her thumb between their hands, glides it over his palm. “But there’s no point now. We’ve got to trust them. What else can we do?”</p>
<p>Downstairs, the two Katyas are moving around the living room, rearranging the furniture. They’ve cleared a space in the middle of the floor, laid down a cloth, a small forest of pillar candles, a rough circle of dried herbs and flowers. Some jars full of dark liquid, some of which appear to be smoking. “Here,” Katya directs, and Brian sits on the floor, her skirt puddling around her.</p>
<p>“Tracy,” she calls in a soft voice. “Beside me, okay?”</p>
<p>Trixie goes. He feels jittery, electricity coursing just under his skin. Brian puts a hand on the small of his back, her painted lips curving up in a sneaky smile. “Don’t worry,” she whispers, close enough to Trixie’s ear that he shivers, “your new girlfriend’s gonna be right on the other side.”</p>
<p>“Oh, my <em>god</em>, super-rich coming from you right now,” he shoots back, flushing.</p>
<p>“You know you were fully the little spoon when we came in, you power-bottom-ass ho?” Brian giggles, sweeping her hair over one shoulder.</p>
<p>Trixie snorts. Because for all the things Brian understands, he knows this can’t be one of them. “Yeah, and you know what, it was actually a really refreshing twist on a classic,” Trixie says. “She also doesn’t bellow in her sleep or drool directly into my mouth. And, honey, if you can’t spoon yourself…”</p>
<p>“Don’t you even,” Brian wheezes, smacking him.</p>
<p>Katya puts Dolly outside. Trixie realizes a moment too late he didn’t give her a kiss goodbye. His heart lurches. He reaches for Brian’s hand, looks into her clear, focused face, not sure what to say. “It’s all right,” she tells him. He nods.</p>
<p>“Baby, you go there,” Katya says, her voice gentle as she turns her attention to her wife. Beatrice settles beside Trixie, and Katya comes last, completing their circle.</p>
<p>Trixie hears a hollow creak. The back door swings on its hinges once, then falls sharply back into place. Trixie looks at Beatrice. She takes his other hand again. Her lips purse together silently, forming a shhhh, as if she means to quiet his pulse back down. He turns to Brian, who’s staring at Katya with large, alert eyes. Katya smiles around at all of them serenely. “<em>Moya vedmachik,</em>” she murmurs. “Will you get us started?”</p>
<p>Brian nods. Trixie can see the way her jaw’s working, how her lashes bat again and again. He lands his hand on her knee, squeezes it tight. She looks down at it, at his face, then lets out a long, steady breath.</p>
<p>There’s a <em>snick</em> like the flick of a lighter, and then all the pillar candles ignite at once. An amber glow paints their faces, heats their skin. Brian lets out a single dry sob.</p>
<p>“I told you you could,” Katya soothes, putting her hand on Brian’s other leg. “Didn’t I tell you, didn’t I say I knew you could?”</p>
<p>“I know, I know you did,” she gasps. “Shit, okay, sorry.”</p>
<p>Trixie stares at her. “Holy fuck. <em>Brian!”</em></p>
<p>She flashes him a wobbly smile, then turns to Katya, who proceeds in a low, calm voice. She directs them each to drink from a steaming jar. For purification, she says. Trixie swallows with a grimace; it’s like if someone made kombucha out of a Yankee Candle, although he opts not to share this opinion with the rest of them.</p>
<p>Once they’ve all sipped, Katya joins hands with Brian, who grabs Trixie’s other hand. He takes Beatrice’s. She’s already clutching Katya’s fingers in her own. The door creaks open and slams again.</p>
<p>“Okay,” Katya says. “Ignore that. Ignore all of it. Anything you hear. Everyone just close your eyes and try, try really hard, to only focus on what you know is real. Because this thing is going to fight us the whole way down, I think. And it’s going to try to rattle us. But we’ve only got a little time to get this right.”</p>
<p>Trixie knows she’s saying these things for his benefit. Maybe Beatrice’s, although from the set of her jaw he imagines she’s seen worse, weirder. His dream flashes back onto the screen on the front of his mind. There’s so much he wants to ask her. There’s no time. Brian’s just nodding along. Her face is still and composed, eyes like ice behind her lashes. Trixie tilts his head in her direction. This beat is warpaint, he realizes. His bare skin feels naked. He grips Brian and Beatrice’s hands tighter, takes a deep breath, and shuts his eyes.</p>
<p>Someone is speaking. Proximity tells him it’s Brian, but her voice sounds strange, pitched down deeper even than when she’s speaking Russian. The rhythms seem like English, but his brain can’t get a handle on the words. He has a sudden memory of being small, small enough that a picture book looked massive in his hands, trying to force meaning on the thick black symbols before him. He doesn’t want to get in trouble. Panic rises in his throat.</p>
<p>Beatrice’s short nails pinch lightly into the back of his hand. He gives them his full attention, and the memory retreats. He feels his weight on the floor, hears her soft breathing. If he inhales really deeply, he can pick up the low gold smell of Brian’s skin on his other side, even through the herbs and greenery surrounding them. Another bright thrum of affection sears through him, and the room seems to grow smaller, cradling them all.</p>
<p>Katya’s voice joins in alongside Brian’s now, not in unison but harmony. They glance off each other and skate past, weaving a thick braid of strange, melodic sound. Behind his eyelids, Trixie can feel the room growing darker, colder, even though he knows the sun should be rising. There’s a sound behind him, an insistent tapping at the window, followed by a long, scraping, metallic shriek that arches his back, sends him twisting forward in a clumsy arc.</p>
<p>On his left, he hears Beatrice make a halting, agitated sound, feels her nails dig harder into his skin as she writhes. It’s on her, too, whatever this thing is. Katya’s voice rises, and the room brightens again, a little bit. He takes a deep enough breath, gets enough control over his tingling spine, to stop moving, to come to rest back on his heels. Eyes still closed, he turns his face to Beatrice and blows a line of cool air softly on her neck. He thinks. Where her neck should be, anyway.</p>
<p>She makes another sound, but she stills. Her grip loosens. On his other side, Brian gives his hand a double-squeeze. <em>Honk, honk.</em> Trixie almost laughs, but swallows it down.</p>
<p>The room gets brighter still. Katya and Brian are chanting louder, now, Brian low and imploring, almost a plea, Katya higher and commanding, a shining blade in her mouth. Trixie’s spine prickles. The spell is no longer raking its nails against the window, he realizes at once. It’s in the room with them, circling them. He can feel it, see its outline on his eyelids like an insect crawling on the other side of a leaf. Its many little legs walk up his spine, creep over his throat. He lets it skitter over his skin, holding back the scream he’s got under his tongue. Beatrice’s breath, Brian’s hand, Katya’s voice. That’s what’s real. He hears Brian’s voice wavering and clutches him as tightly as he can. <em>I love you,</em> he thinks. <em>I love you, you can save us. You can save us.</em></p>
<p>More light, heat flashing on the back of his neck. The tendrils of the spell unwind from his throat, slither over his mouth and down his left arm, heading for Beatrice. He rolls his neck like he can wrap himself in it, keep it from her, wear it like a boa. Brian’s voice takes on strength, and Trixie feels it shifting around him. There’s a rhythm now, a heartbeat in the language. He can feel himself nodding slightly, keeping time. His toes twitch.</p>
<p>It’s Brian, isn’t it? Isn’t this what they do? His mouth opens, and like he has so many times before, he meets Brian, answers her, finds the pulse of what she’s saying and jumps in.</p>
<p>His voice knows what to do. He’s pulling language from somewhere other than his brain, catching the words in his mouth like an eager dog. He’s chanting now, too, his voice moving between Katya’s and Brian’s, dipping and rolling, as easy as music, as rich as an open chord.</p>
<p>Something is sizzling. There’s a cloyingly sweet smell in the air, a low thrumming vibration against his teeth. He keeps his eyes closed, but the shapes against his eyelids suggest fire, smoke, something burning. But Katya hasn’t stopped. Brian hasn’t stopped. He can’t stop either. If there’s fire, then they’ll just have to burn.</p>
<p>Beatrice’s fingers drum a pattern against his hand. <em>Come on, come on.</em> The room is hot. He stays with what’s real. Beatrice’s breath, Katya’s voice, Brian’s hand. <em>Come on, girl.</em> That’s what’s real. <em>I love you, you can save us.</em></p>
<p>She starts to chant, her words staccato and harsh and sparking. For the first time, finally, everything makes sense. All the pieces of the spell fit together. Electricity shudders through Trixie’s body, pulsing from Beatrice to him to Brian and out across the circle to Katya and back again. He’s warm now, liquid with the spell moving through him, the current of it rocking them slowly against each other, but they don’t stop chanting. He braces himself. There’s a sound in his ear like the ocean in a shell.</p>
<p>The windows break inward. The back door screams off its hinges. Brian’s voice cracks in panic as shattered glass thunders down all around them, but he doesn’t stop chanting. Wind howls through the house, tearing pages of Katya’s spellbooks clean out of their bindings. He can feel them hurling themselves through the air, snapping against his face. He feels the bite of glass against the skin of his hands, the back of his neck, anywhere exposed. He needs to look, he needs to open his eyes and assess the damage, shield Beatrice’s face with his hands and protect her from the debris. He needs to throw himself over Brian, keep her from the worst of it, take the damage on his back, his arms, like he knows he can. He can hear his voice growing raw from shouting over the roar of the storm, tries to keep their voices in his ears and nothing else, but he has to look, he has to see, he has to make sure -</p>
<p><em>I love you,</em> comes Brian’s voice in his head. <em>You can save us.</em> The spell is clawing at his throat, trying to choke him, get its million legs in his mouth, rip away his language with the wind it’s kicked up.<em> I love you,</em> Brian whispers in his mind. They’re back in their bed, sun drenching everything, they’re laughing at some stupid thing they’ve come up with, laughing from the sheer exhilaration of being known so deep. <em>You can save us,</em> Brian whispers, and the wind pummels him and the fire rages in the center of the circle and it doesn’t matter because Trixie is loved, he can save them all.</p>
<p>When it stops, he folds in half like the storm’s taken his bones with it. He collapses across Beatrice’s knees, and his eyes stay closed for a long time.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>i'd love to hear what you thought! ✨</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. hyperballad</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><a href="https://tinyurl.com/vernalis">playlist.</a> <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanierose">beanie.</a> polycule. you. i'm so, so grateful. hearing from you means the world, especially on a story that's a big weird swing for the fences like this one. i hope this offered a little distraction during this extremely unmagical time.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Oh, thank <em>gawd</em>. I’m gonna murder you, you fucking drama queen.”</p><p>Trixie inhales sharply, blinking awake. Brian’s hovering above him, mouth twisted with worry. “Stop biting your lip,” Trixie rasps. “Got red lipstick all over your teeth.”</p><p>She cackles, throwing her arms around him and pulling him upright, squeezing him hard against her body. “You are such a cunt,” she whispers. “I thought you fucking <em>died</em>.”</p><p>“I’m tenacious, bitch,” he mumbles against her shoulder. She smells so good.</p><p>“Oh my god, they’re both up. Hi, honey, hello!” Another body launches at them, knocking them both back on what turns out to be the living room couch. Katya’s pawing at his face, shrieking with delight. “Tracy, come look, come look!”</p><p>“Excuse me, you were not this excited when <em>I</em> turned out to miraculously be alive,” Beatrice deadpans. Trixie’s eyes find her at once; she’s perched on the arm of the couch, a blanket draped over her shoulders. He gives her a big dumb grin, and she melts down beside him, tangling up with the rest of them. “So embarrassing how you fainted like that,” she says, cringing. Trixie feels a mortified flush spreading over his face for one second, before Katya swats at Beatrice and she breaks wide open, laughing. “I’m fucking with you. We both, like, immediately passed out, apparently.”</p><p>“It was a lot of magic,” Katya says. She can’t keep her hands off them, touching Brian’s hands, Trixie’s face, Beatrice’s hair. She lingers there until Beatrice pulls her in close for a kiss. Trixie’s ribs feel painfully tight around his full heart.</p><p>“Did it work?” Trixie asks Brian in a low voice. He reaches forward to tuck a blond wave behind her ear. “Did we do it?”</p><p>“We think so,” Brian says. She never holds Trixie like this, not unless she’s dead tired or utterly fucked-out. “We don’t know for sure. We won’t, til we try to leave.”</p><p>Somehow he’d forgotten that’s what it was all for. That succeeding means leaving, means going back. Means never seeing them again. He looks at Beatrice, her big brown eyes inscrutable. He thinks he understands, anyway.</p><p>Katya puts a hand on Brian’s wrist. “Come on,” she says. She’s being brave, her voice cheerful. “Come see what you did.”</p><p>“What did we do?” Brian gets off the couch, gives Trixie a hand to help him up, too. He takes it, but once he’s on his feet he finds he doesn’t want to let go. He clings close, and Brian lets him.</p><p>He realizes distantly that the windows aren’t shattered, that the floor is free of broken glass. The back door looks a little wobbly, but it’s still attached to the frame. He looks at Brian, frowning. “My hands got all cut up,” he says. “They…” He looks at them. They’re not.</p><p>“I know. I don’t know.” Brian’s shaking his head. “I felt it all. It really happened, mama. Look.” He waves a hand at their circle, and Trixie gapes. The herbs have been reduced to blackened piles of ash. And there, in the center, growing straight out of the wood floor, is a rose bush.</p><p>“Somewhat unusual, wouldn’t you say?” Katya asks, prancing around it. “I mean, I’m not a botanist, but.”</p><p>“Okay, but aren’t you, kind of?” Trixie points out. He draws a little closer, not dropping Brian’s hand. Red, yellow, pink, and white blooms erupt out from the floor, intermingling in an exultant spray.</p><p>Beatrice comes up on his other side, brushing his shoulder with her own. “How are we gonna stop Dolly from trying to eat this?” she groans. Trixie snorts with laughter. “I’m serious, you bitch,” she snips, and it’s all he can do not to throw both arms around her, he loves her so much.</p><p>“Come <em>see!</em>” Katya insists, hopping from foot to foot.</p><p>“This isn’t it?” Brian laughs, pulling Trixie along toward the back door, where Katya’s standing. “Because this rose bush is pretty fuckin’ magical, girl.”</p><p>“Not as magical as this,” Katya grins, throwing the door open wide.</p><p>“Holy fuck,” Trixie blurts. Beatrice throws both hands over her mouth, but a sob still escapes her.</p><p>Dolly, barking joyfully, races into the house, circling all of them, her paws skidding cartoonishly on the floor. Trixie catches her by the face and rubs her soft nose as he stares. The back garden, already so rich with plant life, has transformed. It seems now to go on for miles. Flowers, in every color Trixie’s ever seen or even considered, burst like fireworks everywhere he looks. There are huge tropical plants with massive green fronds, bushes and vines heavy with a hundred kinds of fruit, and, if he squints, whole fucking trees stretching overhead: apple and peach and orange and lemon and probably more than a few types he’s never heard of. Trixie doesn’t know anything about plants, but he knows very little of this should be able to survive here. But it’s all growing straight out of the ground, extending endlessly into the distance, like it was planted decades ago.</p><p>“I knew we could do it,” Katya says, walking lightly out into the grass and turning back to face them all. “Just needed a little extra help.”</p><p>Brian’s been standing in the threshold, fingers laced tightly with Trixie’s. The sun lights her face pink and soft. She turns to face him. “We did this,” she whispers.</p><p>Trixie shakes his head. “I’m not magic, girl,” he says. “I was just a session musician. You did this. Because you’re <em>magic</em>, Katya.”</p><p>“Not back home,” she says. She’s smiling a little, tight and sad. “Back home…<em> ya splyu</em>. I’m asleep.” She brings her other hand up, and he takes it at once. “Almost makes you wonder, like, if we could just - “</p><p>“We can’t.” Trixie can’t let himself even think it. “We don’t belong here. You know that, mama.”</p><p>“I know. No, I know.” She wrinkles her nose, waves her hands by her face like she’s trying to shoo away an insect. “O-<em>kay</em>.” She blows a raspberry. “C’mon. Let’s go enjoy the <em>fruits</em> of our labor for ten seconds before we fuck off to the future. Don’t you think?”</p><p>Then she’s gone, sprinting at Katya in her bare feet. They run into the greenery, shrieking, sending a small tempest of butterflies scattering away as they chase each other through the flowers.</p><p>He senses Beatrice approaching him before she speaks. “Hey, girl,” he says. She lets out a wooden chuckle as she comes to stand at his side.</p><p>“Hey, girl,” she repeats, pursing her lips against a smile. It swoons through him like cream through coffee. It’s hard to process that barely a day has transpired since they stood right here, watching their Katyas forage and gather spell components, cautious and sharp with each other. She shifts her weight to her left foot, knocking him gently with her shoulder. “I want to show you something.”</p><p>“Please don’t,” he says, laughing. “I don’t want to be shown anything else for the rest of my life.” She’s already turning to go, knowing he’ll stay close behind her. Of course he does.</p><p>“This way,” she says over her shoulder, winding a path through the jungle in a vaguely easterly direction. He follows her braids, watching them swing as she moves. “Or...it used to be this way. I don’t know anymore, I guess. Oh - oh! Over here.” The greenery parts as they round a corner, revealing a wooden enclosure nestled under a crabapple tree. Trixie trips over his shoes, feeling his face split wide in a grin.</p><p>“Oh my <em>god</em>,” he breathes, rushing toward the pen. “<em>Cash!</em>”</p><p>Beatrice folds her arms, looking between him and the goat with vaguely maternal approval. “Uh-huh. That’s him. You see?” She’s grinning wider now. “He’s fine.”</p><p>He can’t tell her, can’t tell her how bad it was in his dream, the way the goat had screamed. She already knows, anyway. Cash shakes his head from side to side, sending his long grey ears flapping. Trixie bites his lip, extending a hand carefully in his direction. “Can I…?”</p><p>“You can try,” Beatrice shrugs. “He’s an asshole. Here, try this.” She reaches up and plucks an apple from a low-hanging branch, throws it to him. Trixie catches it without thinking and just gapes at it, frozen. “What?” Beatrice asks, raising an eyebrow.</p><p>Like he could answer even if he tried. He laughs at himself, shakes his own head. “Nothing. Oh my god. Nothing. Sorry.” Tentatively, he lowers the apple into the pen. Cash’s flat yellow eyes land on it, and he trots closer, looking equal parts curious and deeply over it. Trixie stays still as the goat snuffles at his fingers, then starts nibbling. Trixie holds back a squeal in the back of his throat. “Oh my <em>god!</em>” He looks up at Beatrice, thrilled. “He likes me!”</p><p>She sidles closer, watching the goat. She’s close enough that he can hear her smiling, even as he keeps his eyes on Cash. “He likes fruit,” she says. “No offense.”</p><p>“Bitch…” Trixie sucks his teeth, making her laugh quietly. She nudges him, nods with her chin at the far end of the enclosure. Another goat, this one brown and a little smaller, is coming closer. “Oh my god, there’s two!”</p><p>“Oh, did that get your attention?” Beatrice asks the goat. “Greedy.” To Trixie, she says, “This one’s Guthrie.”</p><p>“Cash and Guthrie.” He makes his eyes as steely as hers, shakes his head at her. “You are such a <em>dyke</em>.” She laughs with her head back, and he does too. The goats fight over the apple clutched in his fingers, butting against him with their soft noses. He’s not even thinking when he tells her, “I <em>love</em> you!”</p><p>She stops laughing now. His fingers tighten around the apple in his hand, and he starts formulating something bitchy to add, something to water down what he’s said, but he takes a look at her face and realizes he doesn’t have to.</p><p>Footfalls turn their heads. Katya and Brian, still twinned in their black dresses, stumble into the clearing, catching their breath. A few chickens follow along behind them, fluttering around their heels. “Oh, Jesus Christ, there they are,” Katya gasps, throwing a hand out toward the goats. Brian doubles over in silent laughter. “We - stop, <em>stop!</em> We - “ Katya swats at him, and now she’s laughing, too, so hard she can barely speak. “I was like - <em>stop!</em> - what if the garden just <em>swallowed up</em> the goats?”</p><p>“Oh my god,” Beatrice mutters, rolling her eyes.</p><p>“What if they’re up in the - in the branches of a willow tree or something?” Katya wheezes. Brian shrieks. Trixie and Beatrice exchange a glance, shaking their heads at each other. “Hello, babies, my handsome boys,” Katya coos to the goats, once she pulls herself together. She comes to stand on Trixie’s other side, smiling brilliantly at him. Over her shoulder, she calls out to Brian, “It’s all right, <em>moya vedmachik</em>, they’re friendly.”</p><p>The goats abandon the apple in Trixie’s hand and crowd over towards Katya and Brian immediately, bowing their heads to be pet. Brian, who doesn’t even <em>like</em> animals, for fuck’s sake, is gently stroking between Guthrie’s eyes, face as calm and gentle as a maiden in a goddamn medieval tapestry. He doesn’t even have a fistful of grass for the goats, let alone a delicious and exciting crabapple. Trixie’s jaw drops, and he turns to Beatrice, affronted.</p><p>“I know,” she says off his look. “Don’t even get me started.”</p><p>Witches. Trixie wants to fire off a complaint at this obvious injustice, but Brian’s expression, wide-eyed and naked with joy, turns the words to sugar in his mouth.</p><p>After only a moment or two, Brian turns away from the goats. “Tracy, you gotta come see!” he says. “We found a whole buncha Venus flytraps.” He mimes teeth with his knuckles, chomps them in Trixie’s direction. “It’s <em>disgusting!</em>”</p><p>Trixie cackles. “Oh, fierce. We’ll be right there,” he promises. Brian’s already taking off again down another serpentine pathway, Katya right on his heels.</p><p>He follows the sound of them, their chatter and laughter, until the garden eats it up and it’s just him and Beatrice again. Cash snatches the apple from Trixie’s hand and takes off with it. The quiet pools around them. When he turns, she’s a footstep away, and he misses her so much already.</p><p>“Is this okay,” he starts to say, moving toward her, but she’s already pulled him into her arms. He wraps her up in slow motion, like running in a dream.</p><p>“You’re only half right, you know,” she says. She’s on tiptoe so she can rest her chin on his shoulder. “What you said to him before. You might not be a witch, but we all did that spell together. There’s a certain amount of magic you get just from being loved.” She laughs at herself. He knows all her secrets; he can hear tears in her voice. He swallows hard. “I know that sounds crazy. I used to think so too, but…”</p><p>“Bitch, you think anything sounds crazy to me right now?” he says, sniffling, and she laughs as she wipes her face on his shirt. “Hey. Let’s go do what we do best, and make sure those two idiots we like don’t die in some spectacularly unlikely way without adult supervision.”</p><p>“Oh, you mean, like, during a magical rite in our living room, that kind of unlikely?” she suggests, and they’re both cracking up as they pull apart.</p><p>There’s no time. He knows that. They all do. But they let the sun curve a little higher anyway, giving them more light to explore the garden all together. Katya finds a tree heavy with enormous, blushing green pears, and Brian gives Trixie a leg up so he can climb into its branches to shake some down. “You’re a bumpkin, too,” he bellows down to Beatrice. “You have to help me!”</p><p>“I’m older than you!” she screams back up, laughing. “I don’t have to do anything!” Still, she holds her arms out and catches them one by one, as many as they think they can eat, and passes them off to the witches. When Trixie climbs back down, they’re all there to make sure he doesn’t fall.</p><p>They picnic on the grass, watching the dog frolic around in total bliss and the chickens wander through, disoriented and bemused. The sky turns soft, milky blue as they talk. Nobody wants to say it, but every new conversational thread is shorter, every good laugh dies off a little quicker than the one before.</p><p>“Okay,” Trixie says, finally, placing his hand on Brian’s. She looks at him, at the women, then up at the sky. She nods.</p><p>“Okay,” she agrees.</p><p>Brian collects her boy drag from the guest room, where she left it. Trixie has nothing to gather, nothing to leave behind. He feels in his pocket for his wallet, his keys. They’re there. It’s all there.</p><p>In the driveway, they hover by the car. Katya circles it slowly, muttering under her breath, touching a wheel, the hood, the windshield. Trixie glances at Beatrice, who shrugs with a narrow smile. Katya turns back to them. “For protection,” she says, her voice bright with trying. “On the way.”</p><p>Some invisible string gets cut. Brian’s shoulders heave suddenly. Trixie’s body angles toward him at once, but Katya’s there first, the way she’s supposed to be. Trixie hangs back. Beatrice softly takes his wrist, runs her thumb along it. It’s nice. It’s just what he needs.</p><p>“Don’t cry, <em>moya vedmachik</em>,” Katya says. Her voice cracks around the words like a stomped twig. “Don’t cry. You’ll ruin your pretty makeup.”</p><p>“I’m sorry. I just.” Brian’s forcing the words out. He inhales deeply, staring up like that’ll keep the tears at bay. “I knew,” he cries, “I always knew you were real, somehow. You were too… <em>whole</em>, too complete, to just be something my fuckin’ addled brain cooked up. You were always there, you made sense when nothing else did. I swear. I <em>knew</em>.”</p><p>“You were right, honey,” she soothes, and she’s crying too, and Trixie can’t do anything but stand there and hang on to Beatrice and watch. “I’m as real as you, whatever the hell that means.”</p><p>Brian swipes at the mascara blotching under his wet eyes. He shakes his head furiously. “No.” He sniffles, trying to level his breathing out. “I think maybe I’m made-up and you’re real.”</p><p>Katya just lets out a short, sharp laugh. “I don’t think that’s a yellow brick line of thinking we need to skip down at this juncture, mama. One metaphysical concept at a time, okay?”</p><p>He nods. She brings his hands up to her lips and kisses his knuckles, one by one. “Be brave, <em>moya vedmachik,</em>” she whispers. “And, Trixie?” She turns to him, pins him there with her stare. He grips Beatrice’s hand more tightly. “Be steady,” she says softly. “Keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road.”</p><p>He looks back at Beatrice. She nods at him once, warm and reassuring. Her eyes are so wise. Maybe his are, too, if she’s to be believed. Maybe he just can’t see them on the front of his face. “I will,” he tells Katya. “Thank you. We will. Thank you both so much. For everything.” He tries to think of something smart to say. Nothing comes. Sincerity is all he has. “Thank you for everything.”</p><p>Brian rushes in to hug Beatrice, then embraces Katya one more time. She whispers something to him in Russian, and he nods, nods again. She repeats: “Be brave. Be steady. Keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road.”</p><p>Trixie nods. He unlocks the car, and they get in. Brian is trembling, biting down on hiccoughs. When the doors slam shut, he reaches over and takes Trixie’s hand.</p><p>“I love you,” he says. “Let’s see if this fucking works.”</p><p>“Girl, what else are we gonna do?” Trixie asks. He gives the women one final glance, sticks the key in the ignition, and twists.</p><p>---</p><p>Brian slides his wig off eventually, holds it in his hands and stares at it numbly. His makeup’s already smudged from crying, so he peels away his lashes with a sigh and stretches into the backseat for the wipes in Trixie’s drag bag.</p><p>They’re driving back the way they came, back toward the highway, Trixie thinks. “You know, like, I kind of thought we’d turn the key and just, like, boom,” he says.</p><p>Brian laughs hollowly, stuffing a handful of stained makeup wipes into the car door pocket. “But that’d be easy, Tracy,” he says. “Then we wouldn’t have to, like, watch them get smaller as we drive away.”</p><p>“Please,” Trixie says. His voice sounds fragile. Brian coos, reaches over to stroke a few fingers along his ear. Trixie couldn’t even spare them a last look. He has to keep his hands on the wheel, his eyes on the road.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Brian says. “I know it wasn’t like it was just me, I know that you…” He trails off. Trixie nods. He does, he did. Whatever it is.</p><p>They fiddle with the radio, but it still won’t give them anything but static. There’s nothing but the sound of their breathing. Neither of them can find anything to say.</p><p>Long minutes pass. Nothing happens. Trixie feels a lump forming in his throat, swallows it away angrily. It worked. It must have worked. The fire, the garden. Everything falling into place. White clover and cassius. Luck, purity of heart. It has to have worked. If it didn’t work, why are they driving away, why are they leaving them?</p><p>“Trix.” Brian clears his throat. Trixie makes an affirmative sound. “My skeleton’s gonna jump right out of my body if I don’t hear something,” he says, laughing weakly at himself. “Honey, I know you’re so tired, and you’ve been so, like, so beyond incredible, but could you…”</p><p>Trixie glances at him for just a moment. He’s so pale. He’s still got a shimmer of dark shadow around both eyes, making him look even more exhausted than Trixie knows he is. He turns his head enough to brush his lips across the ink on Brian’s wrist where it rests on the back of his seat, then does what he’s supposed to and brings his eyes back to the road. Be steady, she said.</p><p>“<em>We live on a mountain,</em>” Trixie sings quietly. His voice is wavering, all rasp. “<em>Right at the top</em>.” It’s the wrong song for him, especially now, impossible to sing a capella. “<em>There’s a beautiful view/ from the top of the mountain</em>.” He’s rhythmless, and he almost stops, but Brian’s fingers flex against the headrest, and his shoulders start to ease away from his ears. “<em>Every morning I walk towards the edge/and throw little things off…</em>”</p><p>Brian hums softly, soothed. Trixie sings on, watching him out of the corner of his eye, watching him curl his arms in toward himself and shift over onto his side, facing the window, like he might settle down and nap.</p><p>“<em>I go through all this/before you wake up,</em>” he sings. “<em>So I can be happier…</em>” His voice strains for the higher notes, even having transposed the song down for his range. Why couldn’t Brian’s favorite artist be June Carter Cash, like a fucking normal person? “<em>To be safe up here with you…</em>”</p><p>Brian joins him, his voice as distant and light as if he’s singing in his sleep, sweet and off-key. Trixie drums his fingers against the steering wheel, keeping time as best he can, staring straight ahead, letting himself smile a little at the sound. Eyes on the road. Hands on the wheel.</p><p>By the middle of the second verse, Brian’s sitting upright again in his seat, drumming along with Trixie on the dash, glancing his hands off his legs and sternum when the drum should come skittering in. His head swings from side to side like he’s still got his hair on, and Trixie thinks of Beatrice and laughs aloud.</p><p>“<em>And when it lands,</em>” they belt at each other, Trixie nodding in time and Brian writhing in his chair, arms outstretched, “<em>Will my eyes be closed or open?</em>”</p><p>The sun goes black. Trixie grits his teeth through a shocked yell, grips the steering wheel in both hands tight enough to yank it clean off, keeps his eyes on the white lines racing under them on the road, illuminated ghostly-pale in the headlights. He can practically feel them telescoping like an owl’s in the dark. Brian takes in a shuddering gasp, practically leaping out of his seat.</p><p>“Trixie,” he whispers. “Trixie, where are we.”</p><p>“I don’t know.” He hears a low, familiar buzz from the console between them, then another, then another. He swallows hard. “Why don’t you check your phone and tell me.”</p><p>“Trixie.” Shaking hands on the wheel. Swimming eyes on the road. If he doesn’t do what she says, he’ll crash the fucking car and it’ll all be for nothing. The highway rolls on ahead of them, empty and silent. Four lanes, and they’re the only car he can see for miles. Brian’s breathing hard. “Are we…”</p><p>“Katya, look.” A green highway sign appears in the distance. Trixie squints at it as they come closer. “Katya!”</p><p>SAN FRANCISCO   75<br/>
SANTA ROSA        125<br/>
VERNALIS             NEXT RIGHT</p><p>Katya screams, ear-splitting and wild and joyful. Trixie’s laughing, crying, thrashing in excitement, hands locked on the wheel. “We fucking made it!” he’s wailing, hardly even audible over all the noise Katya’s making by his side.</p><p>“Oh my god, I love you, I love you,” he’s chanting. “Trixie, I love you, I want you to - “</p><p>“Marry me,” Trixie interrupts, and he can hear his voice coming out high and hysterical, but he doesn’t care, can’t make himself care. “I want you to marry me! I love you, I love you in every world, everywhere, I don’t want to wait until we hop into another fucking dimension again to do this! Let’s fucking get married!”</p><p>“I was going to say that, you asshole,” Katya cackles. “Trixie, pull this fucking car over <em>right now</em>. Right now!”</p><p>He screeches across two empty lanes and throws it in park on the shoulder, slams his palm down on the hazards and gets his seatbelt off in seconds. He clambers over the console and gets a knee on either side of Katya’s body, pulling him up toward him by the face and kissing him hard.</p><p>“Oh, god, fuck,” Katya is gasping, bringing his hands around to grab Trixie’s ass and push his hips down against his own. There’s a noise in Trixie’s ears at the feeling like firecrackers. He pushes his full weight on top of Katya and drags his hips down into him again. Katya makes a wounded, pleading sound. “Fuck, Trixie, is this real? Are we real?”</p><p>He kisses the words out of his mouth, sucks them off his tongue. He gets a hand between them and yanks his fly open so his jeans hang loose on his hips. Katya snakes his hands down further, slips them under the fabric and squeezes. “Do I feel real, honey?” he whispers. Katya whimpers, lets his head fall back against the headrest. He’s still wearing his short black dress, and Trixie gets a hand under his skirt and palms his hard dick through his underwear. “Does this feel real to you?”</p><p>“Don’t fucking tease me, Tracy,” Katya hisses. He lets go of him with one hand, fumbles for the lever at his side and tugs hard. The seat shoots back, flattening them against each other, making Trixie shriek in surprised laughter. “I’m not gonna marry a girl who teases.”</p><p>Trixie kisses him again, like he’s sorry. “I won’t tease,” he promises, hiking up Katya’s skirt and tugging his briefs down. Katya’s fighting him out of his jeans, trying to work them down over the curve of Trixie’s ass with some difficulty. “I don’t care, I don’t care,” Trixie says impatiently. He pulls his dick out and sinks against Katya, taking both of them in his fist and grinding down hard.</p><p>“Oh, fuck you, oh my god,” Katya gasps, biting down hard on Trixie’s lip. Trixie pulls back, hissing, and releases both of them for just long enough to get a few of his own fingers into Katya’s mouth. He sucks, letting out a broken moan.</p><p>“Is that real enough for you?” Trixie breathes. He can’t keep off him, can’t stop sucking kisses against his neck, his jaw, his ear. “Do you feel real now?”</p><p>“Trixie, Jesus <em>Christ,</em>” Katya hisses as Trixie pulls his fingers out of his mouth and wraps his hand around as much of both of them as he can grab, jerking slow and firm. Katya’s dripping wet, and he knows he is, too, slicking them both up more.</p><p>“You feel pretty real to me,” Trixie’s panting, and Katya arches up, licks into his mouth, quieting him.</p><p>It’s not long for either of them, but the windows still start to crawl with fog as they move together, Katya still pushing Trixie’s hips down greedily against his own. “Fuck, <em>fuck</em>, Trixie,” Katya warns, slamming his head back against the headrest, and Trixie finds himself nodding, urging him on.</p><p>“It’s okay, it’s okay, let me feel you,” he breathes, mouth falling open as Katya comes all over both of them with a low, satisfied groan. The way it feels, slick against his skin, the sight of Katya’s face and neck going pink, the flush disappearing under the scoop neck of his little black dress, takes Trixie over the edge just a stroke or two later. He crushes Katya under him, gasping for air.</p><p>Enough time passes that Trixie starts to worry they’ll fall asleep like this, extremely indecent on the shoulder of a generally busy interstate highway. He planks up off of him with a displeased grunt. Katya, on the other hand, looks blissed out, face open and calm as clear water.</p><p>“Trixie,” he says, his voice gentle like it sometimes gets, only when it’s quiet and they’re the only ones around. “Trixie, I do want to get married. I do want to marry you. I’m sorry I never asked you sooner.”</p><p>Trixie, tugging his clothes back into place and settling into the driver’s seat once again, shakes his head. “I was scared,” he admits. “But she…” His right hand goes impulsively to the middle finger of his left, searching for a phantom ring to twist. “I mean, I think it’s kind of a comfort to know there’s a version of us somewhere that’s a little smarter than we are.”</p><p>Katya wheezes. “Oh, totally. And you know what, she said the - <em>fuck</em>!” he cries suddenly, jerking.</p><p>Trixie lurches toward him in his seat, even as Katya curls tightly onto his side, turning his back to him.</p><p>“What?” he demands. Katya doesn’t speak. Trixie waits, chewing his lip. “Katya,” he tries again, softly. “What’s wrong. Are you okay?”</p><p>“Trixie, oh my god.” He doesn’t sound like he’s in pain. His voice is small, low, strangely calm. “Trixie.”</p><p>Trixie takes a deep breath. They’re here, they’re together. That’s what’s real. “It’s okay,” he repeats. “I’m right here.”</p><p>“I’m awake,” Katya breathes. Trixie, frowning, says nothing. He just waits. “I’m awake, Trixie.” He shoulders himself up. Slowly, he turns to face him. His eyes are shining bright and pale as the moon. “I’m <em>awake</em>.”</p><p>He holds out his hands, clenched into fists, then flips them up and open, like an offering. Trixie feels his throat tighten into a knot, thick with awe, wonder, love.</p><p>Together, silently, they stare at the tiny red flowers erupting into bloom from his palms, craning toward the roof, shuddering toward the sky.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>thank you, thank you, thank you for reading and following. i hope you'll tell me what you thought. ✨</p>
        </blockquote><div class="children module" id="children">
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